EDITORIAL: Empathy and Conditioning violence (mod edit)

[PyRoT]

I just completed my Bachelor degree in Psychology and Neuroscience. I am now going to begin my Honors year. I think I can put forward some intelligent comments.

Basically, these people, IMO, are equating brain activity to behavior way too much. That's as simple as my argument gets really. If taken a little metaphorically though, as well as aneuroscientifically, it makes some sense I guess. All in all though, it seems to suggest that games are not a threat. Dr. Marco Iacoboni is just trying to get some attention it seems. There isn't much to support his statement on the side there. I wonder how much is know about these "super mirror neurons". It sounds a little wishy-washy to me.

Tomek

[Ordibble-Plop]

Basically, these people, IMO, are equating brain activity to behavior way too much.

I find this sentence a little odd. It begs the question, if behaviour doesn't arise from brain activity, what does it arise from?

Or did you mean something like that they are linking non-conciously controlled brain activity with behaviour too much? (I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know the proper terms to use here.)

As it would have it, I just edited a small review paper on autism and the mirror neuron system. It didn't mention "super mirror neurons", but as the Gamespot article mentioned, these seem to be a matter for debate.

A sentence from the article I edited:

"Specifically, the mirror neuron system appears to be an essential component not only of
action understanding [1,2] and imitation [3,4], but also of fundamental cognitive functions
such as social interaction [5], empathy [6], language [5,7], mind reading [5,8], theory of mind [1,5] and emotional processing [9]."

Some of the refs were by Iacoboni.

1. Rizzolatti, G., Fogassi, L., and Gallese, V.
(2001). Neurophysiological mechanisms
underlying the understanding and
imitation of action. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 2,
661–670.
2. Rizzolatti, G., and Craighero, L. (2004).
The mirror-neuron system. Annu. Rev.
Neurosci. 27, 169–192.
3. Iacoboni, M., Woods, R.P., Brass, M.,
Bekkering, H., Mazziotta, J.C., and
Rizzolatti, G. (1999). Cortical
mechanisms of human imitation. Science
286, 2526–2528.
4. Iacoboni, M. (2005). Neural mechanisms
of imitation. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 15,
632–637.
5. Gallese, V., and Goldman, A. (1998).
Mirror neurons and the simulation theory
of mind-reading. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2,
493–501.
6. Gallese, V. (2003). The roots of empathy:
the shared manifold hypothesis and the
neural basis of intersubjectivity.
Psychopathology 36, 171–180.
7. Arbib, M.A. (2005). From monkey-like
action recognition to human language:
An evolutionary framework for
neurolinguistics. Behav. Brain Sci. 28,
105–167.
8. Williams, J.H., Whiten, A., Suddendorf,
T., and Perret, D.I. (2001). Imitation,
mirror neurons and autism. Neurosci.
Biobehav. Rev. 25, 287–295.
9. Gallese, V., Keysers, C., and Rizzolatti,
G. (2004). A unifying view of the basis of
social cognition. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8,
396–403.

[P_T]

Slightly Off Topic here...

You mentioned mirror neurons to be important for cognitive functions such as language. Can you explain how that works? coz some people can speak 3 or more languages fluently without accent while others just can't shake off their accent even after years living overseas.

[Per-Anders]

Don't confuse accents and linguistic ability.

Many people like their own accent or even find them useful and only pick up the elements and nuances that they personally enjoy from the accents around them. In fact I've heard some people decry those who too easily absorb and emulate accents as lacking strength of personality, or being about as impressionable as wet clay.

[PyRoT]

Ordibble P. Lop:

Sorry, I guess I should have made it more clear. I'm a materialist so I wouldnt have meant that behaviour doesn't arise from brain activity. What I meant was that this activity might be simply paired or a pre/post effect of what they are doing. It could also be something like imagination which would go hand in hand with empathizing.

Secondly, even if these neurons do play a big role in empathy there are most likely many other places in the brain which contribute. These neurons may also be activated by other thoughts and behaviors too. The brain is very very complex and interconnected. We cannot assume that these neurons that are seen as activating are actually going to induce imitation too. I'm sure imitation of a behaviour would be controlled by a lot more than just one are of the brain.

Tomek

[P_T]

Don't confuse accents and linguistic ability.

Many people like their own accent or even find them useful and only pick up the elements and nuances that they personally enjoy from the accents around them. In fact I've heard some people decry those who too easily absorb and emulate accents as lacking strength of personality, or being about as impressionable as wet clay.

I'm not talking about something like an Australian picking up American accent here, in that case it's easy to choose to pick up or not to pick up, still same language. I'm talking about something like English spoken with Indian accent or Japanese spoken with American accent.

One of my friend from HK still speak with heavy Cantonese accent eventhough he's lived in Aussie for almost 10 years. I asked him why his accent is still like that and he said he doesn't know. In contrast, another HK friend of mine has only been here for 3 years and yet she speaks like a native.

I'll rephrase my question. Why do some people seem to be able to pick up accent/pronounciation easier than others when learning other languages?

The statement about mirror neurons being important for fundamental cognitive functions got me interested in this. How would it work for language?

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