Mind reading?

[belgareth]

Interesting phenomena but also has huge implications for seduction..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/scientistssayeveryonecanreadminds;_ylt=AvYGwy6t3ak VjLf6WH62DL6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2bm5xNHVjBHNlYwNtcA--

[DrSmellThis]

Fantastic article.

The only thing I would question is their calling them "mirror neurons", when they might well be the same "average kind" of neurons being activated in response to sensory cues about another's mental state.

[belgareth]

I see their point. From the description they were a seperate cluster of cells performing an independent action. Some label had to be applied to differentiate them.

[DrSmellThis]

If the situation was different, or the content being mirrored was different; might you see a different cluster of cells?

[belgareth]

That's a good question but I didn't see anything on it in the articles. They may have not gone that far yet.

[DrSmellThis]

That's all I'm saying.

But I've long believed something like this about empathy; because of the unbelievable richness of interpersonal sensory cues and the universality of human emotion and experience. This will focus the scientific community more on what is happening, which is a great thing.

"Interpersonal resonance" (a term I'm using for the general case under which empathy falls, a sort of gut level shared experience studied by phenomenologists. It's not really about empathy, per se, which is a specifically emotional resonance.) is the primary immediate purpose of human communication, IMO. So this is a hugely important topic for several fields. Smells and pheromones obviously play an important role in this process.

So obviously I think you are correct about there being implications for seduction.

[CptKipling]

From what I know, at least with motor neurons, they are in fact the same neurones that would otherwise be firing to cause movement.