The Mystery of Mirror Neurons

There are a great many things that mystify the fuck out of me in everyday life, but since I’ve begun teaching children and adolescents, one hobby of theirs truly stands above the rest in how it’s appeal has me totally befuddled. This activity would be watching streams of other people playing videogames. Most of my students around age 10 have their favourite youtube streamers, and act as though they are totally devoted acolytes of these seemingly almost completely banal “celebrities”. They are essentially watching people narrate themselves gaming, sometimes with “witty” commentary (though usually I just find it super cringey, though I have a sneaking feeling I may be getting old af.) When pressed about why they enjoy this, the response (as with pretty much every question dealing with introspection at this age) is generally “I dunno”.

Until recently, I had resigned myself to eternal confusion about this phenomenon, then I heard someone explain the concept of Mirror Neurons. These neurons activate in our brains when performing a specific activity, say shooting a basketball, or playing videogames. Now that in and of itself isn’t very interesting, but what is fascinating is that in some experiments, these same bundles of neurons are activated when watching someone do the same activity. This leads us to some very interesting ideas about how we generally perceive action by other people, and how we can empathize and imagine the mental states of other people. It has also been discovered that people with autism have decreased mirror neuron activity, which may go some distance towards explaining many of them have a very hard time imagining others’ states of mind.

As with any interesting scientific discovery, there have been also quite a few people claiming that this whole concept is smoke and mirrors, though I am not really educated enough in this area to understand their arguments, I still think the whole concept is fascinating.

So maybe the next time a kid is watching someone else play videogames, the actual neurons firing in their brain are actually the same set of neurons as if they themselves were playing, which goes a long way towards explaining this phenomenon, because gaming is fun as fuck. This tactic seems especially useful for when you just can’t quite convince mom and dad to buy you that game you really want. Great article below!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mirror-neuron-revolut/