Communication in Theatre Directing and Performance: From Rehears ...

There has been significant and wide-ranging interest in mirror neurons. Evidence suggests that thinking about moving, and having an inner vision of a movement, kindles muscular activity, just as the act of externally watching others moving kindles a bodily reaction in the watcher, albeit at a micro level. However, the team at Parma University that made these discoveries (including Victor Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and Marco Iacoboni) began to speculate that mirror neurons might be even more important in human (and primate) development in that they could be a means to advancing learning in a rapid manner.

The Parma team believed that the relationship between actor and observer may develop into one connected by a bridge of common understanding about what is passing between them. They regarded this class of neurons as the means whereby imitative learning takes place (Rizzolatti et al. 2002). However, since this discovery in the late 1990s, further research has uncovered many more features about mirror neurons. For example, they are located in more areas that at first believed; ‘[W]e found them spread across important regions on both sides of the brain, including the premotor and parietal cortices’ (Rizzolatti, Fogassi, and Gallese 2006, 30). This team also found that mirror neurons that responded to visual cues also fired when the cue was only sounded. They dubbed these ‘audiovisual’ mirror neurons (30).Even more thought-provoking, experiments they conducted on human volunteers have shown that the mirror neuron system responds strongly to the intentional component of an act: