mirror neurons (developed by Veronique Bure)

Researches conducted by Vilyanur, Ramachadran and Oberman, from London.  Hari of the

 university of Helsinki (Finland), Dapretto of the university of California came to the conclusion  that social impairment may be linked to a deficiency in the mirror neurons activity.  This discovery might open new doors to diagnosis.

Mirror neurons appear to be responsible for performing some of the same functions that are disturbed in autism.  They are found in locations responsible for social interactions (such as empathy, joint attention, ability to perceive other individuals’ intention and make prediction about their behaviors).

Mirror neurons are a newly discovered class of brain cells, belonging to motor command neurons, located primarily in the pre motor cortex (frontal lobe) and in different areas of the cortex. People with autism display a lack of mirror neurons activity in different regions of the brains.

 Mirror Neuron Activity

The motor neurons become active when a motor action is performed.  For instance they are active (they fire) when someone reaches for his bag.  Mirrors neurons are a subset of motor neurons that show signs of activity when an individual watches a person perform an action they had just performed (predicting the action will be the same).  The mirror neurons mentally simulate the action of others.  As they are located in various parts of the brain playing role in emphatic emotional responses, mirror neurons might be involved in interpreting complex intentions in others.  They exist in a rudimentary form in great apes.

Experimentation recording the activity of motor neurons while children were performing simple actions showed that the mirrors neurons were not functioning when children with autism watch someone else perform an action, as opposed to the control group of typical children whose mirror neurons were firing.  Their motor neuron system was intact but the mirrors system seemed deficient.  It is not known whether this system is dormant or disabled.

Unknown genetic or environmental factors are suspected to prevent the development of the mirror neurons.

 New approaches to diagnosis of Autism

The discovery that mirrors neurons are deficient in autism, allows new approaches to diagnosing the disorder and offering novel therapy.  The recording of the mirror neurons activity is easily performed through an electroencephalogram (EEG).  When the mirror neurons are active, while watching someone perform and action, their activity suppresses a wave on the electroencephalogram, called Mu wave.  The presence of Mu waves in persons observing others, signals an impairment of their mirror neurons, and therefore could be used as a diagnostic tool.

A treatment could consist in teaching children to suppress their Mu wave, giving them direct feedback by projecting their Mu wave on a screen.  Another treatment would be to correct the chemical (specific neurotransmitters) responsible for the firing of the mirror neurons.

The dysfunction of mirrors neurons alone cannot account for all the other symptoms found in autism such as hypersensitivity, avoidance of eye contact, aversion to certain sounds, self stimulatory behaviors and preoccupation with sameness.  It is another aspect of the brain s’ impairment from which suffer individuals with autism.  It could also be an additional tool to help them attend to relevant visual experience which in turn would increase their understanding of social behaviors.