Pilar Jerico

In the sixties, Albert Bandura carried out an experiment that was a revelation at the time. He showed a group of children a recording of someone beating a doll. When the recording finished, the children, without any prompting, picked up dolls that were lying around the room and started to beat them, just as they had seen in the video. This exercise demonstrated that we learn through observing, and, consequently, that it is far better for us if we have positive role models. The reason behind this imitative behaviour can be found in the malleability of our brain.

One part of our brain is continually monitoring what the other part is doing. The neurons that do this are called “mirror neurons”, and they were actually discovered by pure chance, as is often the case in science. In the 1990s, a group of researchers led by Giacomo Rizzolatti was analyzing the brain activity of macaque monkeys when they discovered something unusual. When a monkey did something, such as pick up a banana, the same area of his brain was activated as when he saw another monkey, or a human, perform the same act. The researchers decided to see if the same phenomenon occurred in the human brain, and they discovered that it did. As Rizzolatti says, mirror neurons help us to understand others, and not only what they think but also what they feel. This explains why we learn through practice and observation.

Mirror neurons dissolve the barrier between you and someone else.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, neurologist, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition