The monkey brain contains a special class of cells, called mirror neurons, that fire when the animal sees or hears an action and when the animal carries out the same action on its own.īut if the findings, published in 1996, surprised most scientists, recent research has left them flabbergasted. "It took us several years to believe what we were seeing," Dr. The same thing happened with bananas, raisins and all kinds of other objects. Later, the scientists found cells that fired when the monkey broke open a peanut or heard someone break a peanut. The same brain cells fired when the monkey watched humans or other monkeys bring peanuts to their mouths as when the monkey itself brought a peanut to its mouth. The researchers, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma, had earlier noticed the same strange phenomenon with peanuts.
Then, something amazing happened: when the student raised the cone to his lips, the monitor sounded - brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip - even though the monkey had not moved but had simply observed the student grasping the cone and moving it to his mouth. Thin wires had been implanted in the region of its brain involved in planning and carrying out movements.Įvery time the monkey grasped and moved an object, some cells in that brain region would fire, and a monitor would register a sound: brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip.Ī graduate student entered the lab with an ice cream cone in his hand.
On a hot summer day 15 years ago in Parma, Italy, a monkey sat in a special laboratory chair waiting for researchers to return from lunch. In the early 1990's, Italian researchers discovered this phenomenon and named the cells "mirror neurons."
MONKEY SEE When a monkey watches a researcher bring an object-an ice cream cone, for example- to his mouth, the same brain neurons fire as when the monkey brings a peanut to its own mouth.
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