The Mind Is a Mirror How Blind People “See” The Actions Of Others
“In essence, when blind people hear the actions of others, they use the same network of cortical brain areas that sighted people use when they observe such actions.”
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Introduce ( Via Scientific American)
The discovery of mirror neurons in the brains of macaques about ten years ago sent shockwaves through the neuroscience community. Mirror neurons are cells that fire both when a monkey performs a certain task and when it observes another individual performing that same task. With the identification of networks of similarly-behaving cells in humans, there was much speculation over the role such neurons might play in phenomena such as imitation, language acquisition, observational learning, empathy, and theory of mind.
Several research groups have observed the activity of mirror neuron networks indirectly in humans through the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This technology allows scientists to correlate changes in blood flow in specific brain areas to particular behaviors or mental operations. Experiments using fMRI have demonstrated that there is more activation in the human mirror system when people observe movements with which they are familiar; for instance, experienced dancers had larger mirror network activations when they viewed steps from their own repertoire compared to moves from a different style of dance.
Key Finding (Via Scientific American)
In essence, when blind people hear the actions of others, they use the same network of cortical brain areas that sighted people use when they observe such actions. This fits into what we already know about how some regions of the brain are recruited for different uses by blind people. For example, congenitally blind individuals rely on areas in the visual cortex to acquire information about an object’s shape and movement through other senses like touch and hearing. As Ricciardi, Pietrini and colleagues point out, the recruitment of visual brain areas for nonvisual recognition in congenitally blind individuals indicates that neither visual experience nor visual imagery is required to form an abstract representation of objects.
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