By Gregory Hickok
W.W. Norton & Company, August 2014
Serving as a case study in how excitement about a scientific discovery can go astray, The Myth of Mirror Neurons relates the breathless exuberance that attended the identification of a new type of brain cell initially regarded as a revelation in our understanding of human brain function. University of California, Irvine, cognitive scientist Gregory Hickok throws cold water on the idea that mirror neurons, which were first observed in the motor cortex of macaques in the 1990s, are crucial to how the primate brain understands the actions of others.
After their initial discovery, mirror neurons became neuroscience’s cells du jour, with tons of papers throughout the 2000s exploring their role in social cognition, language, autism, and ...
