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Scientific discoveries very often happen by chance: the discovery of mirror neurons makes no exception. One afternoon, when studying a neuron motorically activated by the action of grasping with the hand, one of us brought his hand toward a food-tray to grasp a raisin that had to be showed to the monkey: in that precise moment the neuron discharged vigorously. We were really surprised and, I must admit, quite skeptical about this unprecedented and unexpected visual response. Nevertheless, after many repetitions of the same action, we started thinking that a new class of visuo-motor neurons perhaps had been discovered. A class of neurons responding both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action performed by another individual is observed. After that first neuron we decided to look systematically whether more grasping neurons could be activated not by the visual presentation of graspable objects but by the observation of grasping actions. I remember those days as marked by a growing sense of excitation as it appeared that a considerable percentage of grasping neurons could be driven by action observation. We decided to call them "Mirror neurons." |
