Researchers in Parma, Italy have made a wonderful discovery about our brains. I’ve always thought that grey matter….well, matters, but now there’s an additional level of complexity to that thing that is in your skull: mirror neurons. “The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions.” So in effect, we are capable of understanding the minds of others not by thinking, but by feeling which means if you see someone eat an ice cream, your brain is experiencing it as well, but at the neurological level. As I learned at a young age: vedere cacare, venire la voglia (transl.: seeing someone shit makes you want to do the same)!
This is going to revolutionize all areas of psychology as well as media research because if our brains respond to someone else’s actions as if they were our own, then we can examine all sorts of effects that these actions may have on us.
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