“New findings from a Queen’s behavioural expert in eye/hand movement provide the first direct evidence that our brain patterns are similar whether we are actually doing something or simply watching someone else do it.

It’s an insight that could have significant implications for the assessment of people with various movement disorders such as some stroke victims, says Dr. Randy Flanagan, who conducted the study with Dr. Roland Johansson of Umea University in Sweden. The methods employed in the study could be used to determine whether people with impaired movement control also have problems understanding and perceiving the actions of others. The answer to this question will have implications for both diagnosis and assessment.

‘This helps to explain how we understand the movements of others,’ Dr. Flanagan says. ‘We perceive an action by running it at some covert level in our own system. An example would be when sports fans watch football on TV and move in anticipation of action on the screen.’ Although this theory is supported by previous neuro-physiological and brain imaging studies, until now there has been little direct, behavioural evidence.” EurekAlert!

There has been excitement in the neuroscience field for several years over the implication of the discovery of so-called mirror neurons in primates, about which I have posted before and which react when one is watching behaviors of others as other neurons do when the individual is performing an action. As a potential physiological basis for empathy if they operate in humans as they do in other primates, their development may have been important to making us human. The current study seems to offer parallels and may be empirical evidence that the mirroring circuitry exists in humans.