Reflections on Mirror Neurons
According to a recent paper in Nature Neuroscience, children
with autism have virtually no activity in their brain's mirror neuron
system, the apparatus that facilitates imitation and empathy. The
researchers believe this malfunction may be the primary cause of autism. Link.
Posted by alex morgan at 12/5/2006 11:20 AM 
Categories: Neuroscience,Mindreading,Cognition,Emotion,Imaging Technology
Categories: Neuroscience,Mindreading,Cognition,Emotion,Imaging Technology
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3/2/2007 4:21 AM
The Computing Brain wrote:
It has been lately shown that mirror neurons deficiency is related to autism. This is an interesting development. Mirror neurons are traditionally accepted as responsible for mirroring actions, i.e.: If you see a person eat with a spoon, you will immed...
This sounds a bit optimistic to me. There are task for on autists are superior to normals, e.g. in matching embedded figures. How does that mesh with any story about mirror neurons?
Cf. this free Brain article:
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/122/7/1305
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This makes sense, wrote about it in my post here:
http://computingbrain.wordpress.com/2006/12/15/mirror-neurons-and-autism/
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I do read a lot of research on supposed causes of autism. This is just another piece of a very big puzzle. To say this is THE cause is nonsense. There is a very large body of evidence to suggest that the main cause is due to toxic overload. MMR, exitotoxins, environmental rubbish...you name it...our children are being bombarded by it.
The latest research that I believe is starting to really get to the cause, is coming from Dr. Amy Yasko in the states. We are going over some dvds of a presentation she gave, and it makes startling sense, showing that children are almost certainly affected on many different fronts, all curable with bio-medical intervention.
I will look into the mirror neurons and see if it is something that can we can work with.
Many thanks.
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