Mirror Neurons Yet Again
Whoee! Don’t we all love being right? Back on March 26, I said:
How can I communicate to you that there’s been a huge new discovery – possibly the most important about the human brain in these recent decades of unparalleled discoveries – one that fundamentally advances our understanding of what it is to be human and how it is that we can be human?
That post, Mirror Neurons – 1 will link you to three other posts on the same topic.
The November Scientific American agrees: the cover story features two articles, one by the discoverers of this system of neural circuits that seem to explain so much of what it is to be human:
Mirrors in the Mind
(unfortunately, not available online in its entirety)
and one that speculates about what may happen when these circuits don’t work:
Broken Mirrors: A Theory of Autism
But the point is not simply that there’s interesting theory and rampaging speculation about a newly discovered kind of brain circuitry. The point is: Mirror neurons matter to parents. We need to understand that they exist, how they appear to work, and how they are ready to help us raise our kids. Not that we can say “Hey, Kid-Brain, mirror this!” but that knowing something of this circuitry – how it can help, and how it may be misused – will help us do a better job.