Re: Article~Monkey See, Monkey Really Do

[Guest guest]

,This is interesting. I am face blind, and the regions responsible for facial recognition are partly located in the parietal lobes of the brain. In addition,m I had to physically learn about following where another person was looking to see what the person was looking at (and yes, it immediately helped my social skills- LOL!), only about three years ago (or less). An ultra-NT friend told me about it.I wonder if the same part of the brain somehow handles these two areas that have been so difficult for me- facial recognition and recognition of facial emotions. I don't always get social cues that are primarily conventional and cultural (that is, not at all universal), because such things tended to bore me completely, since there was no logical reasoning behind

it. Example: An artificial classification of something into the "Three basic types of ___", when there is no logical reason to break it down to three types at all, or to divide them that way. There are many examples of this. I used to think that recognition of facial emotions was just arbitrary like these man-made divisions into categories, till I learned about AS and realized it is real.Thanks for posting it,To: aspires-relationships Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 3:26:49 AMSubject: Article~Monkey See, Monkey Really Do

Monkey See, Monkey Really Do - The old adage "monkey see, monkey do" applies not only to mimicking movements, but also to following gaze — monkeys quickly look in a particular direction if they see other monkeys looking that way. Now, scientists think they have found the area of the brain responsible for this mirroring behavior. Neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), a part of the brain associated with attention, fired both when monkeys looked in a particular direction and when they saw pictures of other monkeys looking in that same direction, said researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. This finding suggests that controlling one's attention and interpreting someone else's attention may involve the same neurons. The finding likely applies to humans because our brains are so similar to those of monkeys, and "the same brain areas have reacted in people and in monkeys in gaze-following studies [using brain imaging]," said Platt, a Duke professor and senior author of the study.

http://www.livescience.com/animals/090518-monkey-mirror.html