TOW #4: Mirroring People by Marco Iacoboni (Part 1)

         I think it is quite safe to assume that most of us at one point in our lives have watched an emotional movie and found ourselves choking up a bit. Or heard a sad story, perhaps dealing with sickness or death, and you felt terribly upset, even if you never met the people who it affected. It is normal to say, "of course someone should feel this way, we are human." After all, that is true. But has the question ever been asked, "why do we feel this way?"  

         The direct answer to that question is mirror neurons. There are actual neurons in our brains just for the purpose of empathizing and connecting with others. After this discovery, the author writes this book to share with the public the amazing breakthrough in neuroscience. Marco Iacoboni, a neurologist and neuroscientist now working at Geffen School of Medicine in UCLA, takes the reader through an easy read about the studies of mirror neurons. Targeted for any interested young adults to elders, this book is broken down for any dummies of the public, an easy read for anyone. To break this down, he mostly introduces a question of the mind, then goes into an experiment done about, the results, and then the conclusions. For example, he inputs an anecdote about cooking dinner while his daughter is doing her homework. Her study materials are blocking his view from seeing what she is doing, but he can still immediately understand her movements even though he cannot see them clearly. How is that possible? He then elaborates on the experiment done with monkeys, and the results. All of this is in easy, dummy terms, not hard to understand science ones. 

       Iacoboni writes this to share with the public the intricate and extremely competent aspects of the brain. In doing this, he appeals to logos by giving examples of everyday use of mirror neurons so the reader can understand more easily. He also uses anecdotes to portray an everyday sense of these neurons with his own experience. I believe he achieves his purpose in sharing this discovery, making it interesting and coherent for the public. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in psychology and neuroscience. In a 279 page book, Iacoboni definitely keeps the world of science entertaining and intriguing.