Monday, June 16, 2008

The mirror system is involved in what?! Is this for real?

The mirror system isn't just for grasping anymore, according to a new study published by Mouras and colleagues in NeuroImage. I just have two questions: Is there anything that the frontal operculum won't respond to? And is there anything that won't be attributed to mirror neuron function? Ramachandran calls this study "bold." I think I will withhold further commentary on this one, although our hit count would probably skyrocket if I did. Just click here and evaluate for yourself.

2 comments:

David Poeppel said...

Hmmm, maybe it's subvocal production that's driving the inferior frontal gyrus? (Oh G..., Oh G... -- that sort of thing?)

As one of my esteemed colleagues here has said -- and I will do him the service of respecting his anonymity, but he is a syntactician whose last name starts with "H" and ends with "ornstein" -- if the whole mirror neuron schpiel is on the right track and extends to this type of stuff, the *nicest* thing you can say to somebody is "Fuck you". Truer words were never said.

David Poeppel said...

Bill Idsardi just pointed me to 'Neurocritic''s comments on this stuff. Very clever and amusing post by neurocritic -- whom I would like to treat to beers sometime.

http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2008/06/mirror-neurons-control-hard-ons.html