Mirror Neurons

Neuroscientific evidence suggests that one basic entry point into understanding others' goals and feelings is the process of actively simulating in our own brain the actions we observe in others. This involves the firing of neurons that would be activated were we actually performing an action, although we are only observing it in someone else. Neurons performing mirroring functions have been directly observed in primates and other species, including birds. In humans, brain activity consistent with "mirroring" has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex.

The data revealed that even the most complex, abstract emotions—those that require maturity, reflection, and world knowledge to appreciate—do involve our most advanced brain networks. However, they seem to get their punch—their motivational push—from activating basic biological regulatory structures in the most primitive parts of the brain, those responsible for monitoring functions like heart rate and breathing. In turn, the basic bodily changes induced during even the most complex emotions—e.g., our racing heart or clenched gut—are "felt" by sensory brain networks. When we talk of having a gut feeling that some action is right or wrong, we are not just speaking metaphorically.

So, I'm saying the mirror neuron system underlies the interface allowing you to rethink about issues like consciousness,representation of self,what separates you from other human beings,what allows you to empathize with other human beings,and also even things like the emergence of culture and civilization,which is unique to human beings. See: VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization 

  How important is the environment in that we might see the development of the conditions of "specific types of neurons" when the color can dictate the type of neuron developed? Can we say that the color(emotion) is an emotive state that we might indeed create in the type of consciousness with which we meet the world. A consciousness that that sets the trains of thought given the reality of our own perceptions. Or,  perpetuated thought processes unravelled in a world of our own illusions?

In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible. In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it. Joseph LeDoux

Psychology professor Karim Nader is helping sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder lessen debilitating symptoms—and in some cases, regain a normal life.Owen Egan See also: The Trauma Tamer See Also: Brain Storming IC: Why is this research so important? Karim Nader: There are a lot of implications. All psychopathological disorders, such as PTSD, epilepsy, obsessive compulsive disorders, or addiction—all these things have to do with your brain getting rewired in a way that is malfunctioning. Theoretically, we may be able to treat a lot of these psychopathologies. If you could block the re-storage of the circuit that causes the obsessive compulsion, then you might be able to reset a person to a level where they aren’t so obsessive. Or perhaps you can reset the circuit that has undergone epilepsy repeatedly so that you can increase the threshold for seizures. And there is some killer data showing that it’s possible to block the reconsolidation of drug cravings. The other reason why I think it is so striking is that it is so contrary to what has been the accepted view of memory for so long in the mainstream. My research caused everybody in the field to stop, turn around and go, “Whoa, where’d that come from?” Nobody’s really working on this issue, and the only reason I came up with this is because I wasn’t trained in memory. [Nader was originally researching fear.] It really caused a fundamental reconceptualization of a very basic and dogmatic field in neuroscience, which is very exciting. It is the first time in 100 years that people are starting to come up with new models of memory at the physiological level.

Part of the understanding for me is that in creating this environment for neural development the retention of memory has to have some emotive basis which arises from the ancient part of our brain in that it is associated with the heart response.



 Savas Dimopoulos

Here’s an analogy to understand this: imagine that our universe is a two-dimensional pool table, which you look down on from the third spatial dimension. When the billiard balls collide on the table, they scatter into new trajectories across the surface. But we also hear the click of sound as they impact: that’s collision energy being radiated into a third dimension above and beyond the surface. In this picture, the billiard balls are like protons and neutrons, and the sound wave behaves like the graviton. See: The Sound Of Billiard Balls

While these physiological processes are going on in our bodies the chemical responses of emotion trigger manifestations in the world outside of our bodies. Let us say consciousness exists "at the periphery of our bodies." What measure then to assess the realization that such manifestations internally are in the control of our manipulations of living experience? Are we then not caught in the throes of and are we not  machine like to think such associations could have ever been produced in a robot like being manufactured?

Of course this is a fictional representation above of what may resound within and according to the experiences we may have? The question is then how are memories retained? How do memories transmit through out our endocrinology system the nature of our experiences so that we see consciousness as a form of the expression through which we color our world?