More on Mirror Neurons

The November 2007 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience is all about mirror neurons, brain cells that are activated or “fire” both when we perform an action and also when we see that action being performed. The November 7th Science Daily contains an overview of the journal’s articles. Mirror neurons are thought to be of interest in understanding autism and the brains of autistic persons:

Some scientists speculate that a mirror system in people forms the basis for social behavior, for our ability to imitate, acquire language, and show empathy and understanding. It also may have played a role in the evolution of speech. Mirror neurons were so named because, by firing both when an animal acts and when it simply watches the same action, they were thought to “mirror” movement, as though the observer itself were acting.

Advances in the past few years have newly defined different types of mirror neurons in monkeys and shown how finely tuned these subsets of mirror neurons can be. New studies also have further characterized abnormal-as well as normal-mirror activity in the brains of children with the social communication disorder known as autism, suggesting new approaches to treatment.

When Charlie was turning two and we were awaiting an official diagnosis of autism for him, he did not imitate. Actually, it seemed more that he could not imitate: Charlie did not talk and I still remember a pediatrician saying to me, most kindly, “You say ‘juice’ and he will try to say something and you wait a moment, then you give him the juice. The next time, you ask him ’say juice, juice!’ and he will say something, maybe jjj and then you give him the juice. The next time, you ask him to say a little more, maybe joo and when he does…..”. I tried this little sequence again and again with Charlie and not only did no sound come from his lips, he gave no sign of understanding what I was asking him to do, and I marveled at how easy the doctor made it all sound.

Aristotle states in his Poetics that imitation is “natural” to humans from childhood, that it is indeed how we learn. Perhaps the Greek philosopher might have seen the notion of mirror neurons as confirming his observation. But is imitation then thought to be characteristic of—part of being—human? More to the point, mirror neurons (and Aristotle) to some extent simply confirmed my understanding about how differently Charlie’s brain is “wired” differently. What to do with this information?

The first thing that we did was to teach Charlie to imitate and after eight years at it, he is become quite a watcher, especially if he is interested (cooking dinner), less so if he is not (writing the alphabet). This says to me that, at least in Charlie’s case, some of the functions attributed to mirron neurons can be learned, though some of the new research in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that mirror neurons are fully developed by the time a child is 7 years old.

What’s most of all interesting to me about all this is that imitation—modeling—has proved a powerful way to teach Charlie. In teaching Charlie to use a fork, or build with blocks, or write his ABC’s, teachers have often done the “hand over hand” prompt, placing their hand over Charlie’s and guiding his fingers to do the activity. Often this has resulted in Charlie not really learning the skill due to excessive physical guidance, and to disliking having his hand and fingers handled so much. More effective has been to request “copy me” or “do this”; while Charlie initially was guided with a hand over hand prompt to do the activity, he was able to learn it on his own, and also to learn to look at the teacher and do what she is doing. As one scientist in says,

[Jaime Pineda, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego] and his group have been using neurofeedback training to successfully renormalize functioning in this system. That is, they see mu suppression that is more characteristic of the typically developing brain following such training. “Our findings are consistent with the idea that mirror neurons are not absent in autism,” Pineda says, “but rather are abnormally responsive to stimuli and abnormally integrated into wider social-cognitive brain circuits.

Another researcher, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, PhD, at Cardiff University, notes that even when a subject appears to be passively watching an activity, they are still picking up on it:

“These data suggest that activity of human mirror neuron systems is generally increased by attention relative to passive observation, even if that attention is not directed toward a specific motor activity,” says Muthukumaraswamy. “Our results suggest that the mirror system remains active regardless of any concurrent task and hence is probably an automatic system.”

And Lindsay Oberman, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, notes mirror neurons in autistic persons’ brains function differently:

…. to say that the mirror neuron system is nonfunctional may only be partially correct….Perhaps individuals with autism have fewer mirror neurons and/or less functional mirror neurons that require a greater degree of activation than a typical child’s system in order to respond.”

Oberman also notes that mirror neurons may play a part in autistic persons’ having difficult with anything new, from a food to a house because the evidence for “normal mirror neuron activity in autistic children may indicate that mirror system dysfunction in these cases reflects an impairment in identifying with and assigning personal significance to unfamiliar people and things.” Indeed: There is a very nice, very clean, pair of black shoes for Charlie in the corner behind me but, even though they look exactly like his current pair of shoes, Charlie will not wear them. The new black shoes much lack what it is that sets Charlie to know that “those are my shoes.” (And what about what might happen if one moves into a new house…….)

The Journal of Neuroscience articles underscore for me why we have to keep working on Charlie’s ability to imitate. So many years of working at it does have a payoff: In the past year, Charlie has spontaneously imitated random phrases he hears us say, and often with early-clear articulation: All those years of saying “do this!” have led to him learning the skill, the necessary function?—of imitation, maybe later, but not never.