Mirror Neurons

In class were briefly touched on the subject of mirror neurons, which are neurons that fire when an animal acts or observes the same action done by another. We learned that these neurons exist primarily in the ventral premotor cortex F5 areas of a monkey’s brain. Experiments proved that neurons in the VPC F5 area fire when a monkey does an action, but also fire when a monkey watches a human do the same action. However, when the monkey watches the human just carry out the motions of the action, not actually do it, the neurons in this area do not fire as much. This topic really interested me because in class we were only presented with the fact that mirror neurons activate during movements. I did not realize how mirror neurons could be involved
The object directed action was to grab a button on a box by making the index finger and the thumb meet, a pinching movement. The non object directed action was to do the same pinching movement, but do not actually grab a button. The study started with the unimodal session where the participant did both the object directed (ODA) and the non object directed (NDA) actions. This session was followed by the cross modal session to identify the cortical regions where regions were showing cross modal transfers. The cross modal session had these different actions in different orders: ODAEXE /ODAOBS, NDAEXE/NDAOBS, ODAEXE/NDAOBS, NDAEXE/ODAOBS. The researchers analyzed their data in 3 steps: Step 1 was using the unimodal data only to determine cortical regions that responded to both the observation of the action and the execution of the action. Step 2 was using the cross modal data only to calculate the cross modal adaptation effect, Step 3 was combining all of the data and looking at the areas that survived both Step 1 and 2 contrast. Step 1 showed activity caused by the execution of the action in the following areas: occipital cortex, right anterior intra-parietal sulcus, inferior parietal lobule, somatosensory cortex, primary motor cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor cortex. The observation of the
I think the most interesting part of this research is trying to understand the extent of mirror neurons activity. So far there have only been a few areas of the human brain that have been identified to have mirror neurons. In class we did not learn about areas such as the inferior frontal gyrus and Broadmann 44/45, which seem to be vital regions for mirror neurons in humans. With further research, researchers may be able to understand why these mirror neurons are in the region that they are in and when they will fire in the brain. Hopefully by understanding when these neurons fire we will be able to understand what mirror neurons are able to do, such as muscle movement which we discussed in class, playing games, or even