Literally, the night before our Psych 100 lecture on observational learning, I was heckling my boyfriend about why in the world he gets so excited about a silly March Madness basketball game. Mind you this was after he jumped up, clapped a strong loud clap, and woo’d at the top of his lungs. Now I don’t hate watching sports like some girls, but I could never imagine reacting that way to anything sports related. He, of course, responding to my questioning with, “I don’t know, I can’t help it. I just get so excited.” I simply just dismissed the situation after that since I was only picking on him anyway. Little did I know, the next afternoon I would have the answer to my questions. The culprits for such reactions are mirror neurons. Mirror neurons were first found to exist by neuroscientists studying motor neuron activity in a monkey’s brain while the monkey picked up a peanut. As a fluke, they discovered mirror neurons. As a scientist picked up a peanut in front of the observing monkey, they found that the monkey’s brain fired as if he picked up the peanut himself!
In order for mirror neurons to actually create a response the observer must meet four requirements. They must first notice the action and then remember it. Consequentially they also must have the ability to imitate the action (mentally and physically) and must desire to take part in the action. So that explains it, my boyfriend loves playing sports, and he would choose to actually play every day of the week rather than watch it on television. I next started to wonder how mirror neurons impact my life in a significant way, and I realized mirror neurons affect me when I am watching a sappy movie. I always cry at the sad parts, even though I know that it is ridiculous. I have the desire and the ability to have a true love, family, or even a dying dog, and this allows my mirror neurons to run my emotions rampant.
I found this blog to me very interesting actually because it got me thinking about mirror neurons and how they have affected me. I began thinking and noticed that I do many things that my parents used to do simply out of habit. I used to watch them always do certain things and now I do the same things; things that to many people probably would probably think seem ridiculous. One example is how my dad would always yell at my family when the fridge was open for a long time while we looked for something to eat. He always wanted the fridge closed and I never understood why. Maybe it was to save electricity or something but I also know that his father (my grandfather) used to be the same way. Now that I’m in college and have a tiny fridge of my own in my dorm, I noticed that it bugs me like crazy whenever someone leaves the fridge open for a while or is simply playing with it by pushing it open and closed with their foot. I realize that I shouldn’t care about this and yet it still bothers me. I believe it is because I am following in my fathers footsteps and him in his father’s. This is like one huge mirroring equation that will probably fall onto my kids in the future.