Mirror, Mirror in the Lab

Journal 2: Summary 1

I found this website through Google when I searched for mirror neurons and autism. Through all of the many articles I found this was among the very best for a few reasons. First of all the article is from an accredited university, it is a more recent article, and it is a clear, concise and easily understandable article. The author, Inga Kiderra, starts out by explaining to the reader what the function of mirror neurons are and why they are thought to be connected to autism. The mirror neurons are aptly named and are also sometimes called the “monkey see, monkey do” neurons. These neurons fire in the brain both when an individual sees and then does the same motion. Kiderra goes on to describe an experiment done by a group of scientists from UCSD with an EEG machine. The study was done on 10 male autistics and 10 control subjects. The experiment involved watching videos of a certain activity, like a waving hand, and then the individuals would wave their hands on their own while they were being monitored to see what area of the brain would respond to the EEG. When the participants waved their own hands the neurons fired, but when watching the video they did not. This suggests that autistics are unable to comprehend what others are doing around them and thus they are unable to essentially learn from their environments. This explains many of the problems autistic children encounter such as problems with speech, and personal interactions. Kiderra brings up the possibility of therapies involving mirrors to trick the autistic brain into interacting with itself. To conclude Kiderra admits that there is still much to learn and much to overcome but that there plenty of opportunity in this new research. Overall this article was a excellent and I recomend it for a general understanding of mirror neurons.


Kiderra, Inga. “Autism linked to mirror neuron dysfunction.” 30 Mar. 2005 Medical News Today. 25 Jan. 2007. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=21971

Picture: A child with autism, wearing an EEG cap to measure brain-waves, watches video of a moving hand. (Credit: Lindsay Oberman)

Autism: Past and Present

Journal 1:

Autism is something I have always been interested in. When I was younger, I remember I would always get Autism mixed up with Down syndrome. I don’t particularly know why I did this; I just associated the two as being the same thing. After a while, I grew tired of not knowing the difference between the two very different disorders and decided to research them. I realized that Down syndrome was a disorder caused by a deformation of the 21st chromosome, which causes mental and physical disabilities. It is a definable and clear disorder.

Autism, I found, was completely different. Autism has been an unanswered question since 1912, baffling and astounding doctors, scientists, and parents. Every case of autism is different with no set standard of cause or symptoms. Autism is like a two-way mirror; a child is in a room by himself, looking at a clouded mirror, unaware that we are on the other side of that mirror looking in at him and trying our best to breakthrough; to let him know we are there.

From the first time I looked up this disorder it fascinated me. It stayed at the back of my mind up until it was discovered that a cousin of mine, Noah, had been diagnosed with autism. I recalled the few babysitting sessions we had had together and found the characteristics of autism there right in front of me. I was never, however, given the opportunity to work with Noah due to family problems. Since then, autism has been the source of a furious thirst, something that I can not seem to quench. When the topic of a research paper was brought up, this was obviously the first thing that came to mind. My previous encounters with fascinating research
sparked my curiosity and my drive to further my knowledge on a subject that has always been at the back of my mind.

The focus for the paper will be on a new theory surrounding the cause of autism; a disruption in mirror neurons. There is still a lot of research to be done in the area, but what has been done so far is astounding. Mirror neurons are being haled by some scientists as the most important discovery of the decade, and by others as an over hyped theory. I'm anxious to begin looking further into the truth about mirror neurons.

The image is of the location of the mirror neuron system in humans from Wikipedia.com.