"Mirror neurons code intentions. Whether mirror neurons register the goal of an action or other higher-level systems must chip in to judge other people’s intentions has been the subject of much debate. The evidence is accumulating that mirror neurons “implement a fairly sophisticated and rather abstract coding of the actions of others,” says Iacoboni. One clue is that while a third of all mirror neurons fire for exactly the same action, either executed or observed, the larger number — about two thirds — fire for actions that achieve the same goal or those that are logically related — for example, first grasping and then bringing an object to the mouth. And these neurons make fine distinctions: When a monkey observed an experimenter grasping an object and pantoming the same action, the neurons fired when the experimenter grasped the object but not during the pantomime. “In academia, there is a lot of politics and we are continuously trying to figure out the ‘real intentions’ of other people,” Iacoboni says. “The mirror system deals with relatively simple intentions: smiling at each other, or making eye contact with the other driver at an intersection.”
Mirroring increases with experience. In the first studies, monkeys mirrored when they saw a person grasping food but not if the person used a tool. That made sense because monkeys don’t use tools. In later research, monkeys did mirror humans using a tool; Iacoboni suggests that their brains had “learned,” adjusting to seeing researchers with tools. In humans, more mirroring activity occurs when dancers see other dancers perform routines they know well. Mirroring in blind people is more active in response to more familiar action sounds."
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