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Monkey See, Monkey Do? The Role of Mirror Neurons in Human Behavior
We are all familiar with the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” – but have we actually thought about what it means? Over the last two decades, neuroscience research has been investigating whether this popular saying has a real basis in human behavior. Over twenty years ago, a team of scientists, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma, discovered special brain cells, called mirror neurons, in monkeys. These cells appeared to be activated both when the monkey did something itself and when the monkey simply watched another monkey do the same thing. The function of such mirror neurons in humans has since become a hot topic.
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Fatty foods enhance mood regardless of taste
The Independent: A new study sheds light on why we reach for fatty foods like burgers and fries when feeling blue - and it may have little to do with the pleasure principle. While exposed to sad or neutral music and images, researchers injected 12 non-obese, healthy subjects with fatty-acid solutions and saline infusions via gastric feeding tubes. When injected with the fat solution, the subjects reported feeling less sad than those who were administered with a saline infusion. Subjects also underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans so that researchers could chart their brain activity during the experiments.
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The Dark Side of Oxytocin
For a hormone, oxytocin is pretty famous. It’s the “cuddle chemical”—the hormone that helps mothers bond with their babies. Salespeople can buy oxytocin spray on the internet, to make their clients trust them. It’s known for promoting positive feelings, but more recent research has found that oxytocin can promote negative emotions, too. The authors of a new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, takes a look at what oxytocin is really doing. Oxytocin’s positive effects are well known.
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Understanding Unconscious Associations
Mahzarin Banaji studies how our minds make decisions without awareness, intention, and control. She analyses how one human being judges another and the extent to which social groups (such as nationality, gender, race, physical attributes) enter into choices. She studies both behavior and the brain, she analyzes the minds of both adults and young children, and she conducts her experiments in the traditional laboratory as well as on the web. With two colleagues she hosts an educational and research site (www.implicit.harvard.edu) at which the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used to teach people about the associations in our minds of which we are unaware.
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Food for Thought
Ask 10 people how a certain food tastes and most likely, you will get 10 different answers. The science of taste is the focus of Linda Bartoshuk's research, including how individuals vary in their genetic ability to taste. In addition to conducting basic taste research, Bartoshuk works with patient populations, studying taste and oral pain disorders. Bartoshuk's lab discovered supertasters, individuals who perceive very intense tastes (they have more taste buds than most people). Due to their strong taste experiences, supertasters tend to avoid a number of foods (e.g., bitter vegetables); this can affect health risks.
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Regulating Social Behavior
How do people regulate their social behavior, especially when unconscious prejudices and stereotypes threaten to bias our responses? David Amodio studies the mechanisms of self-regulation by integrating ideas and methods from social psychology, neuroscience, and psychophysiology. His research has elucidated the sources of implicit bias, rooted in separate systems for learning and memory, as well as the interacting neurocognitive mechanisms involved in the control of social responses. This work has led to a better understanding of why self-regulation sometimes fails and why some people are better at self-regulation than others.
