MIRROR NEURONS. I first came across the idea of these during a psychological evaluating conversation on the peculiar show Hannibal. When Dr Lecter deduces the infamous Will Graham’s main issue down to the fact of him having too many mirror neurons as an adult and therefore enabling him the ability to have 100% empathy with anyone including of course the serial killers in which he investigates in the show. The interesting thing about mirror neurons is that the neuron fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. It is argued that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation and when we are babies we have a vast amount of them in our premotor cortex as it is imperative to our growth and development into lone surviving human behavior, however in normal development as we grow older the neurons tend to degenerate and we have fewer left into our adult years which of course was the issue with Will Graham in the show, where this development did not occur for him. What is known in actual psychological and neuronal studies is based on tests on monkeys as it is not possible to study single neurons in the human brain so theories on mirror neurons are quite indirect and hypothesized. The study is still quite young however it is an exciting topic as it could be the gateway to deductions in several psychological diseases such as autism. #psychology #mirrorneurons #mirroneuron #hannibal #neurons #brain #neuroscience #medicine #psychologystudent #psychologist #university #medicalschool #understand #tests #research #amedicsworld #hanniballecter #doctors #drlecter
