According to V.S. Ramachandran (inaugural ‘Decade of the Brain’ lecture at Society for Neuroscience meeting), ‘mirror neurons are to neuroscience what DNA was to biology’. Their discovery (by Rizzolatti’s group) led to the understanding of how hominids rapidly evolved through imitation and cultural transmission in the last 100,000 years. In this chapter, we will review the role of human mirror neuron system (MNS) in several mental and brain functions including: interacting with the environment, grasping objects, empathy and compassion for others, empathizing, emulation and emotional contagion, observing and imitating, learning sports, motor skills and dance, motor rule understanding, understanding the intentions of others, understanding gestures and body language, lip reading, recognizing actions by their sounds, learning to play a musical instrument. The chapter is enriched with a discussion of possible criticalities and caveats.
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