Have you ever looked at someone and seen them yawning and started yawning too? Or have your mouth watered when someone was eating in front of you even though you were full? These and the ones that activate us emotionally or cognitively when we watch, even if we do not do so, are the work of "mirror neurons", one of the latest discoveries of science.
Mirror neurons receive and transmit signals from the outside world through all the senses, especially hearing and vision. These are the cells that store their photocopies. Sometimes we catch ourselves involuntarily imitating other people's facial expressions or reciting the lyrics of a song that we don't even remember where we heard it. These are situations that we encounter in daily life and show the imitation feature of mirror neurons.
The definition of mirror neurons is as follows: These are the neurons that fire in both cases when the person makes the movement himself or observes someone doing the same movement.
In 1996, Giovanni Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese and their team from the University of Parma in Italy discovered a different type of neuron in the frontal lobe of macaque monkeys, which they called mirror neurons. They announced that they discovered a motor cell. This neuron was activated when watching someone do something as if they were doing it themselves. This discovery came to light when a scientist was eating a banana in front of a monkey during an experiment and the monkey responded with high voltages from its brain as if it were eating a banana, even though it was not eating a banana. The existence of such neurons in humans was proven by a study conducted at the University of California in 2010. They noted that in humans, these mirror neurons are found not only in the motor region of the brain, but also in the visual and memory regions. This means; Contrary to popular belief, mirror neurons are found in many more regions in the human brain.
So what do these mirror neurons do?
Thanks to them, we can understand the meaning of the other's action without resorting to reasoning. This is what we habitually call "intuition", "empathy" or "hunch" in everyday life. We can say that in the long-term survival process of species, natural selection favors not only the stronger one, but also the one that feels the "coming wind". In addition, in the evolutionary process, the empathy ability and moral value judgments of the human species have developed and It can also be stated that it has an effect on the spread of the virus.
The human brain and body have millions of activities waiting to be discovered; such as laughing, crying, yawning, enthusiasm. These are emotions that can easily spread and be imitated among people. Facial expressions are also the primary means of communication in both humans and animals. Emotions are processes that are mostly reflected in facial expressions. Mirror neurons also carry out the task of recognizing emotional expressions by performing mental representation and imitation.
Giacomo Rizzolatti, one of the discoverers of mirror neurons, explained the functions of mirror neurons. According to him, their most important feature is that they are activated when we ourselves engage in a behavior or when we understand that another person is performing a behavior. In the mechanism of mirror neurons, the representation of a behavior is taken from the complex visual area of the brain and projected to the motor area. In this way, we understand the behaviors and can repeat them later when necessary. When we see another person's behavior, we understand why that person does that behavior without experiencing that behavior ourselves. According to Rizzolatti, we owe this perception to mirror neurons; Through these, we can not only understand the behavior but also predict the next behavior.
Ramachandran states that mirror neurons have a much greater function than thought. We can say that it provides important services to the formation of learning, perception and culture in humans, explaining our social abilities, and is an important part of this mosaic. Mirror neurons may be insufficient to explain everything, but they shed light on many issues that we have had difficulty explaining until now.
In recent studies, mirror neurons have an important role in making sense of "herd psychology". The common reactions of people watching matches, and the state of exaggeration and exuberance at rallies or social events that even the people themselves find astonished, are situations attributed to these neurons.
There are also possibilities that these mirror neurons may play a role in schizophrenia, autism and some other psychiatric disorders. between. This is called the broken mirror theory and it is stated that these people cannot be a "mirror" to the other party, that is, they cannot empathize. It is said that they are in a state of emotional deprivation. According to this theory, children with autism have broken mirror neurons. In children with autism, the mirror neuron appears to function very well in terms of photocopying its surroundings. Signals coming from the sensory organs create a response and image in the mirror neurons, but since these cannot be transmitted further to the brain's cognitive ability, facial expressions and speech centers, facial expressions, gestures and speech abilities do not develop in these children.
Finally; From all these judgments we can arrive at this; Understanding each other is actually a gift given to us by our physiology and our brain, it is almost our destiny. This actually means that it is biologically impossible for us to remain indifferent to the pain, happiness or behavioral reactions of others. I hope you use this gift your mind has given you functionally...
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