A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal performs an action and when the animal observes the same action performed by another (especially conspecific) animal.

Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself performing the action.

These neurons have been observed in primates, including humans, and in some birds.

In humans, they have been found in Broca's area and the inferior parietal cortex of the brain.

Some scientists consider mirror neurons one of the most important findings of neuroscience in the last decade..

For more information about the topic Mirror neuron, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Sensory neuron — Sensory neurons are nerve cells within the nervous system responsible for converting external stimuli from the organism's environment into internal ...  > read more

Mirror test — The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness developed by Gordon Gallup Jr in 1970. The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal ...  > read more

Cognitive neuroscience — The field of cognitive neuroscience concerns the scientific study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition and is a branch of neuroscience. ...  > read more

Motor neuron — In vertebrates, motor neurons (also called motoneurons) are efferent neurons that originate in the spinal cord and synapse with muscle fibers to ...  > read more

Related Stories

Musician In The Mirror: New Study Shows Brain Rapidly Forms Link Between Sounds And Actions That Produce Them (January 13, 2007) — A new imaging study shows that when we learn a new action with associated sounds, the brain quickly makes links between regions responsible for performing the action and those associated with the ...  > read more

Autism's Fogged-up Mirror (January 3, 2005) — People with autism experience less activity in the brain neurons that specifically trigger human empathy, according to a new study by UdeM researcher Hugo Théoret. The professor in the ...  > read more

How Mirror Neurons Allow Us To Learn And Socialize By Going Through The Motions In The Head (December 21, 2008) — The old adage that we can only learn how to do something by trying it ourselves may have to be revised in the light of recent discoveries in neuroscience. It turns out that humans, primates, some ...  > read more

Culture Influences Brain Cells: Brain's Mirror Neurons Swayed By Ethnicity And Culture (July 23, 2007) — The brain's mirror neuron network responds differently depending on whether we are looking at someone who shares our culture, or someone who doesn't. A thumb's up for "I'm good." The rubbing of a ...  > read more

Why Autistic Children Do Not Imitate Or Empathize: It Could Be A Dysfunctional Mirror-neuron System (May 4, 2007) — New imaging research shows that impairments in autistic children's ability to imitate and empathize can be linked to dysfunction in the brain's mirror-neuron ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Our Changing Climate