Monkey's Brain: Mirrors In The Brain

Mirrors in the Brain On a 1991 hot summer day in Parma, Italy, a lab monkey awaited its researchers’ return from lunch. The researchers had implanted wires next to its motor cortex, in a frontal lobe brain region that enabled the monkey to plan and enact movements. The monitoring device would alert the researchers to activity in that region of the monkey’s brain. When the monkey moved a peanut into its mouth, for example, the device would buzz. That day, as one of the researchers entered the lab, ice cream cone in hand, the monkey stared at him. As the student raised the cone to lick it, the monkey’s monitor buzzed—as if the motionless monkey had itself made some movement (Blakeslee, 2006; Iacoboni, 2009). The same buzzing had been heard earlier; when the monkey watched the humans or other monkeys move peanuts to their mouths. The flabbergasted researchers, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti (2002, 2006), had stumbled onto a previously unknown type of neuron. These mirror neurons provide a neural basis for everyday imitation and observational learning. When a monkey grasps, holds, or tears something, these neurons fire. And they likewise fire
when the monkey observes another doing so. When one monkey sees, its neurons mirror what another monkey does. It’s not just monkey business.
Imitation occurs in various animal species, but it is most striking in humans. Our catchphrases, hem lengths, ceremonies, foods, traditions, vices, and fads—all spread by one person copying another. Imitation shapes every young human’s behavior. Shortly after birth, a baby may imitate an adult who sticks out his tongue. By 8 to 16 months, infants imitate various novel gestures (Jones, 2007). By age 12 months, they begin looking where an adult is looking (Brooks & Melzoff, 2005). By 14 months, children imitate acts modeled on TV (Melzoff & Moore, 1997). And by 2 ½ years, when many of their mental abilities are near those of adult chimpanzees, young humans surpass chimps at social tasks such as imitating another’s solution to a problem (Herrmanner al., 2007). Children see, children do. (pg
173) I absolutely agree with the studies of imitation. I work in a church nursery, and if a child sees you eating, they automatically want to eat. Also, it works with enforcing positive behaviors, if you want a child to clean up or pick up the toys, instead of just telling the child what you want; you need to start cleaning as well. If you do the action, they will want to be like you and like the other children who start to imitate you, and will begin cleaning as well. Same way with trying to get your child to eat healthy, you can’t insist that your child eat a salad when you are eating ice cream in front of them. It just isn’t going to work, you have to eat the salad for them to want to do the same. A personal example is when I was younger, and I was going to get my ears pierced, I made my mom get hers pierced first then I would overcome my fear and get mine done.