Something to Consider • 75Something to Consider
Mirror Neurons
We not only take action ourselves, but we regularly watch other
people take action. This “watching others act” is most obvious when
we watch other people’s actions on TV or in a movie, but it also
occurs any time we are around someone else who is doing some-
thing. One of the most exciting outcomes of research studying the
link between perception and action has been the discovery of neu-
rons in the premotor cortex (● Figure 3.39) called mirror neurons.
In the early 1990s, Giacomo Rizzolatti and coworkers (2006;
also see di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Gallese et al., 1996) were inves-
tigating how neurons in the monkey’s premotor cortex fi red as the
monkey performed actions such as picking up a toy or a piece of
food. Their goal was to determine how neurons fi red as the monkey
carried out specifi c actions, but they observed something they didn’t
expect. They found neurons in the monkey’s premotor cortex that fi red not only when the
monkey picked up a piece of food, but also when the monkey observed the experimenter
picking up a piece of food.
This initial observation, followed by many additional experiments, led to the discov-
ery of mirror neurons—neurons that respond both when a monkey observes someone
else (usually the experimenter) grasping an object, such as food on a tray (● Figure 3.40a),
and when the monkey itself grasps the food (Figure 3.40b) (Rizzolatti et al., 1996).
These neurons are called mirror neurons because the neuron’s response to watching the
experimenter grasp an object is similar to the response that would occur if the monkey
were performing the action. Just looking at the food causes no response, and watch-
ing the experimenter grasp the food with a pair of pliers instead of his hands, as in
Figure 3.40c, causes only a small response (Gallese et al., 1996; Rizzolatti et al., 2000).
Most mirror neurons are specialized to respond to only one type of action, such as
grasping or placing an object somewhere. Although you might think that perhaps the
monkey was responding to the anticipation of receiving food, the type of object made
little difference. The neurons responded just as well when the monkey observed the
experimenter pick up an object that was not food.
Consider what is happening when a mirror neuron fi res in response to seeing some-
one else perform an action. This fi ring provides
information about the characteristics of the
action, because the neuron’s response to watch-
ing someone else perform the action is the same
as the response that occurs when the observer
performs the action. This means that one func-
tion of the mirror neurons might be to help
understand another person’s actions and react
appropriately to them (Rizzolatti & Arbib,
1998; Rizzolatti et al., 2000, 2006).
What is the evidence that these neurons are
actually involved in helping “understand” an
action? The fact that a strong response occurs
when the experimenter picks up the food with
his hand but not when the experimenter uses
pliers argues that the neuron is not just respond-
ing to the pattern of motion. Other evidence
that mirror neurons are doing more than just
responding to a particular pattern of stimula-
tion is that neurons have been discovered thathfd● FIGURE 3.39 The green shaded area indicates the
location of the premotor cortex, which is where mirror
neurons are found. (Source: From E. B. Goldstein, Sensation and
Perception, 8th ed., Fig. 7.8, p. 161. Copyright © 2010 Wadsworth, a
part of Cengage Learning. Reproduced with permission. www
.cengage.com/permissions.)
Premotor
(mirror area)
● FIGURE 3.40 Response of a mirror neuron when (a) the monkey watches
the experimenter grasp food on the tray; (b) the monkey grasps the food;
(c) the monkey watches the experimenter pick up food with a pair of pliers.
(Source: Reprinted from G. Rizzolatti et al., “Premotor Cortex and the Recognition of Motor
Actions,” Cognitive Brain Research, 3, 131–141, Copyright © 2000, with permission from Elsevier.)
Firing rate(a)(b) (c)Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.