First Day

April 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I arrived too late last night to hear the opening address from …….. Just caught the end of it. There was no room inside the main auditorium so myself and what seemed like hundreds of other delegates had to stand around and watch it on a screen in the foyer. It’s my first time at The Conference, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I got talking to a chap from Calcutta, India, who I was standing next to and he said these opening speeches are always the same. Polite welcoming noises followed by lots of words like ‘deeper’, and ’simpler’, and phrases like ‘going into the light’, and ‘exactly here, precisely now’. These were the exact words that ……… closed with so I guess the chap from Calcutta knows what he’s talking about.

The hotel I’m in is not what I expected at all. I registered with The Conference too late to use one of the suggested hotels to had to pick one pretty much at random from lastminute.com Tiny room, lots of concrete, complete silence.

There are a LOT of parallel sessions here so choices about what to go to are pretty hard to make. This morning I went to hear a paper on Mirror Neurons and Zham Zhong (which is a kind of tai chi meditation practice apparently). I’ll report back on that later when I’ve heard a few more. The next presentation that sounds interesting is something to do with Morality and Quantum Theory. Again, more of this later.

Posted in Mirror neurons, Morality, Quantum Theory, Story | No Comments »

Mirror Neurons and Zhan Zhuang

April 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Just had breakfast and am trying to catch up on the report. Didn’t get around to commenting on the first paper I heard yesterday on Mirror Neurons and Zhan Zhuang (excuse previous mis-spelling). Zhan Zhuang, or ’standing like a tree’ is a Chinese meditation practice associated with qigong and tai chi, (and therefore is based on principles which have no scientific credibility). The basic idea of the paper seemed to be that:

1. Zhan Zhuang is good for you because it organises proprioception
2. Organised proprioception facilitates sensory integration
3. Sensory integration is a good thing (for reasons that were not immediately clear)

There wasn’t actually anything said about mirror neurons at all because the speaker ran out of time. (The chap from Calcutta that I met at the opening was particularly agitated about this). I’ll try and grab the presenter later and ask him what the connection was.

Posted in Mirror neurons, Proprioception, Sense | No Comments »

More on Mirror Neurons

April 26th, 2006 Fred McVittie

This abstract was given to me at dinner last night (hand written!) and the presentation is apparently some time today. I will try to get to it and report back.

It has been shown that the areas of the brain which are activated when we carry out an action, say ‘grasping’, are also activated when we imagine the activity. This is sometimes referred to as a ’simulation’. Furthermore, these same areas are activated when we read about or witness someone else carrying out the action of ‘grasping’. This simulation, or mirroring of the action seems to be a key component in understanding the action or the meaning of the word (Feldman & Narayanan 2004), and the process is occasionally referred to as the action of ‘mirror neurons’.

The significance of these findings for metaphor studies is that these same areas of the brain are also activated when we read about or hear an utterance which makes metaphorical use of the term ‘to grasp’, for example; ‘to grasp and idea’; ‘to grasp an opportunity’. This implies that the metaphorical mapping of concrete, body-based concepts onto abstract concepts is not only a function of the minds cognitive processes, but is also taking place at a neural level. The patterns of neuronal firings which occur during metaphor usage are, in effect, the neural correlates of concepts.

Feldman, J. and S. Narayanan (2004). “Embodied Meaning in a Neural Theory of Language.” Brain and Language(89): 385.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Feldman, J. and Narayanan, S., Grasp, Metaphor, Mirror neurons, Neuroscience, Story | No Comments »

Education, Metaphors, and Mirror Neurons

August 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It has been shown that the areas of the brain which are activated when we carry out an action, say grasping, are also activated when we imagine the activity. This is sometimes referred to as a simulation. Furthermore, these same areas are activated when we read about or witness someone else carrying out the action of grasping. This simulation, or mirroring of the action seems to be a key component in understanding the action or the meaning of the word (Feldman and Narayanan 2004), and the process is occasionally referred to as the action of ‘mirror neurons’.

The significance of these findings for metaphor studies is that these same areas of the brain are also activated when we read about or hear an utterance which makes metaphorical use of the term ‘to grasp’, for example; to grasp and idea; to grasp an opportunity. This implies that the metaphorical mapping of concrete, body-based concepts onto abstract concepts is not only a function of the minds cognitive processes, but is also taking place at a neural level. The patterns of neuronal firings which occur during metaphor usage are, in effect, the neural correlates of concepts.

The implication of these findings for educators and students will be discussed, particularly in relation to the teaching and learning of abstract or metaphysical concepts.

Posted in Grasp, Metaphor, Mirror neurons, Neuroscience | No Comments »

Mirror Neurons and Acting

November 9th, 2006 Fred McVittie

There is no evidence that the extent to which one is able to mimic, emulate, or simulate behaviour correlates with a measurably different amount of mirror neuron activity, or that such ability, or excessive levels of neuronal mirroring is found disproportionately in individuals who have careers in acting (a skill which, on the face of it, may seem to be optimally suited to congenital mimics). Nor is there evidence to support such a correlation between acting, neuronal mirroring and emotional response (although a severe deficit in mirror neuron activity, as found in autism sufferers, does show such a correlation). Pathological examples of mirroring behaviour, such as is found in some cases of Tourette’s Syndrome and in some compulsions, may correlate with a higher than average level of activity in mirror neurons but clearly does not tend to lead to careers in show business.

Posted in Acting, Mirror neurons | No Comments »

Brainwave Synchronisation

October 27th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Emmanuelle Tognoli and J.A. Scott Kelso at Florida Atlantic University have found that there is a pattern of brainwave activity only emerges when ones activities are synchronised with those of another person. Apparently related to the effect of ‘neuronal mirroring’, the newly found pattern has been dubbed phi.

Abstract
Many social interactions rely upon mutual information exchange: one member of a pair changes in response to the other while at the same time producing actions that alter the behavior of the other. However, little is known about how such social processes are integrated in the brain. Here, we used a specially designed dual-electroencephalogram system and the conceptual framework of coordination dynamics to identify neural signatures of effective, real-time coordination between people and its breakdown or absence. High-resolution spectral analysis of electrical brain activity before and during visually mediated social coordination revealed a marked depression in occipital alpha and rolandic mu rhythms during social interaction that was independent of whether behavior was coordinated or not. In contrast, a pair of oscillatory components (phi1 and phi2) located above right centro-parietal cortex distinguished effective from ineffective coordination: increase of phi1 favored independent behavior and increase of phi2 favored coordinated behavior. The topography of the phi complex is consistent with neuroanatomical sources within the human mirror neuron system. A plausible mechanism is that the phi complex reflects the influence of the other on a person’s ongoing behavior, with phi1 expressing the inhibition of the human mirror neuron system and phi2 its enhancement.

TOGNOLI, E., LAGARDE, J., DEGUZMAN, G. C. & KELSO, J. A. S. (2007) The phi complex as a neuromarker of human social coordination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 8190-8195.

Posted in Mirror neurons, Neuroscience, Tognoli, E., Lagarde, J., Deguzman, G. C. & Kelso, | No Comments »

Eyes Touching in the Light

October 30th, 2007 Fred McVittie

When we were a baby of only a few hours old, before any light of consciousness has been lit in that little box of bone, when our mother smiled at us, we smiled back at our mothers. Before we had any idea of what a smile means, or what a mother is, or what seeing is, or what a mouth is, before any of that and before any of anything, we smiled back. How did we achieve this miracle? Certainly not by any rational intention on our part. What we are told happens, and we have no reason to discount this explanation, is that some of the light bouncing around the delivery room reflected off the lips of the woman who had recently given birth. This light flew across the room at an incomprehensible speed and entered the eye of the baby, our selves, where it impacted on sensitive cells at the back of the eye. These impacts were then converted into electrochemical signals that travelled up the optic nerve to our baby brain where they exploded in a storm of frenetic activity. Some of this activity took place within special neurons in our tiny, barely-formed brains which somehow translated this maelstrom into instructions to the muscles of our baby face, particularly our mouth, and as if by magic, we smiled back. This neuronal mirroring, as it is called, caused us to reflect with our bodies what we had seen with our eyes, not by ‘copying’ what Mummy did, for such a sophisticated concept would have been way beyond us, but by the simple and direct touching of our eyes and minds across space and in light.

Posted in Consciousness, Light, Mirror neurons, Neuroscience | No Comments »