Mirror Neurons

"In the early 1990s, neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his research team at the University of Parma were studying motor neurons in the frontal cortex of macaques"

Marco Iacoboni is a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at UCLA, where he directs the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. "We are hard-wired to feel what others experience as if it were happening to us," he says."
      - NPR  show To the Best of Our Knowledge has section on mirror neurons and empathy.
          It's in segment 3 and starts at the 42 minute mark
    -  Marco Iacoboni on Empathy and Fairness part 1
    - Marco Iacoboni on Empathy and Fairness part 2

"in San Diego, Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD, offers, "We used to say, metaphorically, that 'I can feel another's pain.' But now we know that my mirror neurons can literally feel your pain." "Mirror neurons dissolve the barrier between you and someone else," says Ramachandran. He calls them "Gandhi neurons.""

"Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at U.C. Berkeley's Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, flatly labels mirror neurons a myth. But her voice is drowned out by an academic chorus of mirror hosannahs. U.C. Berkeley critic Gopnik, the significance of mirror neurons "is blown way out of proportion." She says their power to explain consciousness, language and empathy "is just a metaphor.""

"Iacoboni's team at UCLA collaborated with Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon who was implanting electrodes into epileptic patients in an effort to find the origins of their seizures so they could be surgically treated. Once those electrodes were in place, and after patients gave permission, it was possible for Iacoboni to test individual human neurons for mirroring. He found mirror neurons in several parts of the human brain."

"The evolutionary roots of human mirror neuron systems reach back millions of years, says Michael Arbib, director of the USC Brain Project, and author of "From Action to Language via the Mirror System." The evolution of language appears to be connected to the mirror-neuron-rich area of the brain associated with movements of the hands, he says, while the evolution of our empathic mirroring capabilities seems to be associated with regions of the brain governing movements in the face."

"Mirror neurons had an inconspicuous start, says Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and the author of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," and other books about evolution. "All evolutionary innovation begins with a mistake," he says. Some genetic mutation may have led to a misfiring set of neurons that enhanced hand-eye coordination. This "programming bug," as Dennett calls it, must have conveyed an advantage amplified by natural selection. And once simple mirror-neuron networks were established, he says, "they may well have played a big role in the evolution of empathy, and imitation, and social understanding."