Read my mind
(New Scientist Magazine, 27-1-2001, Features)
Imagine you had cells in your brain that could read
other
people's minds. Well, you do. And they could be the
key
to human language, empathy, even society, says
Alison
Motluk
A CHILD watches her mother pick up a toy. The child
smiles:
Mum wants to play. A husband watches his wife pluck
car
keys from a table. He shivers: she really is leaving
this time. A
nurse watches a needle being jabbed into an elderly
patient.
She flinches: it must have hurt.
How do these people know what the other person is
thinking?
How do they judge intentions and feelings, or assign
goals or
beliefs to the other? It sounds simple, but the
child could just
as easily have decided that Mum was leaving or the
husband
that his wife wanted to play. Yet they didn't. They
knew.
"Reading" the minds of others is something we take
for
granted. Yet philosophers, psychologists and
neuroscientists
alike have been baffled by our ability to anticipate
other
people's behaviour and empathise with their
feelings. Now a
team of Italian neurophysiologists may have stumbled
on the
key to this mystery.
Full article at:
http://www.newscientist.com/features/features_22751.html
Cordially,
Francisco Yus
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