Mirror Neurons

Right now my computer is running through a MatLab program that I wrote. If all goes well, my laptop won't blow up and crash from memory. Instead, the results will tell me that I've reached another dead-end and I'll have to try a new approach to analyzing my data. Thus is science!

Today I went to an excellent talk given by a man who does neural recordings from human patients with epilepsy at UCLA. He's studying mirror neurons, which were first discovered in monkeys! Remember how I wrote a while back that neurons are kind've like little people who are talking to each other in a busy restaurant? Some of the neurons talk more than others, some have very deep husky voices and others are high-pitched and nasal sounding! Well, a mirror neuron is a special type of neuron in the brain that changes the way it talks when a person sees another person do a task AND when the person himself does the task. For example, one of my mirror neurons might be very quiet but suddenly, when I see somebody reach for a bacon cheeseburger, my neuron will start to squeal with excitement. If I myself reach for a bacon cheeseburger, the neuron will do the exact same thing! Now, even though there are no bacon-cheeseburgers to be found in Israel (eating dairy and meat together is not kosher and pig is pretty much the meat of the devil), people have all sorts of mirror neurons that respond to different behaviors. One of the types that the speaker discussed today was one which would respond when I see another person smile and also responds when I myself smile! Mirror neurons are exciting because they may have something to do with how we learn by imitating others (like learning how to play the guitar by watching someone) and may be related to empathy. It might even be that mirror neurons explain why yawning is contagious (when you see a person yawn, then you yawn too!).

Other than attending the lecture today and programming like crazy, I've also continued to go to the summer courses being offered here. I'm learning a lot about statistics and basic neuroscience and I'm really thrilled at how well the classes I've already taken at U of A have prepared me for the material I'm learning now. I also think it's really cool how the math classes here use the exact same letters and variables as they do back home. They also right math left-to-right here even though Hebrew is written in the opposite direction. Math really is a universal language!

Last night, I went with Tanmay for shawarma, yet again. This time however, we tried chicken shawarma and found it very good. I also got my hair cut yesterday afternoon. Now, clever Mom can rest assured that I'm not running around Israel with an unkempt mop on my head. Unfortunately, if a terrorist tries to catch me I won't be able to fight him off with my Samsonite strength! Though I don't have any pictures of my new hairdo, it actually turned out surprisingly well. The barber I went to knew absolutely no English, so while I was waiting to be cut I looked for the best hair-photo I could find in one of the stylist magazines and then had to explain what I wanted with a lot of scissor-cutting imitations with my fingers! The best thing about the whole experience was that, since neither of us knew one-another's language, we didn't have to put up with the casual small-talk that I find to be sometimes very torturous. I didn't even have to tell him whether I wanted my neck-line square or rounded at the back (since I can't see the back of my head I still don't know what he decided to do)! It's sometimes refreshing not to have to make such painstaking decisions like these!