This talk was given at the Tunguska-2001 international conference but it is not about the Tunguska event. Instead we tried to give some flavor of mirror matter, which is predicted to exist if parity is an unbroken symmetry of nature, to non-experts. The possible connection of the mirror matter ideas to the Tunguska phenomenon was indicated by Foot and Gninenko some time ago and was elaborated b...

Visual responses in the monkey ventral premotor cortex have been explored since long time. Area F5 has been shown to contain grasping neurons that visually discharge either to 3D-object presentation (canonical neurons) or to the observation of actions performed by other individuals (mirror neurons). It has been suggested that the mirror response results from the progressive generalization to ot...

The discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) has been hailed as the most important finding of the last decade in neuroscience (Ramachandran, 2000), paving the road for the explanation of diverse phenomena from the evolution of language (Rizzolatti & Arbib, 1998), through imitation (Iacoboni et al., 1999), to intersubjectivity (Gallese, 2003). Here I am concerned with the more modest claim that credits...

The discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s has led to much excitement in the cognitive neurosciences. After the initial discovery more and more abilities have been attributed to these neurons. As mirror neurons are commonly viewed as vehicles of representation, we analyze the increasingly wider representational role mirror neurons play and argue for a principled distinction between mirror and...

A left-handed patient suddenly developed a right hemiparesis, mirror-reading, and mirror-writing. Although he could discriminate between right and left on himself, he demonstrated right/left spatial disorientation. We propose that his right/left spatial disorientation was induced by a scanning defect. It has been demonstrated that mirror-image engrams are normally available. We believe that a r...

OBJECTIVE To identify neural networks associated with the use of a mirror to superimpose movement of 1 hand on top of a nonmoving contralateral hand (often referred to as mirror therapy or mirror-induced visual illusion). DESIGN A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of mirror-induced visual illusion of hand movements using a blocked design in a 1.5T magnetic resonance imaging s...

Mirror self-recognition is a hallmark of higher intelligence in humans. Most children recognize themselves in the mirror by 2 years of age. In contrast to human and some great apes, monkeys have consistently failed the standard mark test for mirror self-recognition in all previous studies. Here, we show that rhesus monkeys could acquire mirror-induced self-directed behaviors resembling mirror s...