Tag: Mirror Neurons

To make events more effective:
1) Action needs to be in a temporal sequence.
2) Action needs to be goal-oriented.
3) Action needs to be repeated.

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Identification: Psychoanalytic and Biological Perspectives
David D. Olds
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 2006 54: 17
http://apa.sagepub.com/content/54/1/17

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I will argue that the evolution of primates, particularly cortical expansion, led to a high level of imitative ability, which allowed for new forms of memory. The neurobiologists’ discovery of the mirror
neuron reveals a property of brain whereby it perceives through virtually enacting others’ actions. In infant development a dyadic interchange takes place involving imitations and attunements, so that the infant takes on many characteristics of the parent in the process of internalizing behavior, affects, and communicative skills, including language. We can speculate that there has been an evolution leading to human identification that would involve (1) the evolution of multiple memory systems, in particular procedural memory; (2) mirror neurons developing in mammals; (3) imitation evolving in mammals and increasing in importance in primates; (4) the prolonged plasticity of human childhood, allowing for imitation and attunement; and (5) the advance of mentalism or theory of mind, possibly occurring exclusively in humans. The evolutionar push to imitation and internalization may have social roots beyond their value to the individual, particularly in the transfer of culture.
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What is striking is that perception has more to it than iconic representation. Perception is “being there.” Especially with interpersonal perception and recognition, one does not simply perceive, one becomes. In this model the visible actions and expressions of the other seem to some extent invasive and controlling.
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Mirror neurons as a theoretical framework for Experiential Marketing

The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association article reviews Cognitive Science, Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis and provides a theoretical framework for experiential marketing.

Mirror Neurons and Intentional Attunement: Commentary On Olds
Vittorio Gallese

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 2006 54: 47

http://apa.sagepub.com/content/54/1/47

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The same functional logic that presides over self-modeling is
employed also to model the behavior of others: to perceive an action
is equivalent to internally simulating it. This enables the observer to
use his or her own resources to experientially penetrate the world
of the other by means of a direct and automatic process of simulation.
Embodied simulation automatically establishes a direct experiential
link between agent and observer, in that both are mapped in a neutral
fashion.
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We do not just “see” an action, an emotion, or a sensation. Side by
side with the sensory description of the observed social stimuli, internal
representations of the body states associated with these actions,
emotions, and sensations are evoked in the observer, “as if ” he or she
were performing a similar action or experiencing a similar emotion or
sensation.
. . .

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Experiential Marketing produces existential change through theatre.