Tom’s Wordpress Blog

The popular press and the blogosphere are always hungry for information about the next big thing. But when that big thing comes from a specialized scientific field, guys like me can have a difficult time knowing what to make of it all. Then it can help to have someone well-versed in the scientific literature and methods step forward to put their views out there. I guess the real problem has something to do with journalists not being trained in science and most scientists not trained to communicate in journalistic terms.

So I was pleasantly surprised to run across Mirror Neurons, Language and Meaning by a cognitive psychologist. He(?) seems to take exception to the hoopla surrounding the idea of mirror neurons. The subject does appear pretty widely in all sorts of places these days, including right here. 

The first big objection has something to do with expanding a discovery taken from research on Italian monkeys to humans:

What functions, exactly, the mirror neuron system subserves in humans is not really known. Ignorance, however, is no barrier to speculation

 But the thing that seems to produce the most irritation doesn’t come from blogs or skimpy news presentations, but from inside the research community. Researchers who’ve outlined a theory of the role of mirror neurons in how humans acquire language are singled out. 

In short, they’ve given us nothing but a bunch of wild speculation that seems to be based more on the belief that mirror neurons are really cool than on any empirical evidence about what mirror neurons actually do. You can’t solve long-standing problems like connecting arbitrary speech patterns to meanings, and the evolution of language, just by saying, “Look, mirror neurons!”

Thoughtful and well-written posts like this one  are a good find for non-academic readers like me.  Hope to find more in the future.