"Mirroring People" - Marco Iacoboni : Power Hour Reading

For my power hour reading, I chose Mirroring People, by Marco Iacoboni. The chapter I read is called "Monkey See, Monkey Do" and deals with the mirroring neurons in the brain and how our actions and other people's actions are perceived. When we see someone picking up an object - for example a tennis ball - our own neurons fire in response to that to mirror that action, even though we are not performing that action ourselves. This response differs from species to species, in macaque monkeys, these neurons don't fire when a pantomime of an action is being performed, but in humans they do. This is likely because monkeys don't pantomime actions to teach them, but in humans, imitation is key.
One of the experiments mentioned in the book had to do with a 41 minute old baby. Every second of the baby's life was documented to ensure that it had never seen the actions before. A researcher then performed specific actions to the newborn, and the newborn imitated them perfectly even though it had never seen them before. This suggested that newborns don't learn to imitate, they actually learn by imitating, disproving old theories about human imitation and learning. In fact, it's been shown that babies LOVE imitation games. Imitating a baby's movements automatically make you that baby's favorite, and the same is true for all humans of all ages as well. Having someone imitate you in a casual conversation also helps you connect with the other person better, and helps facilitate a better short-term relationship.
The reading seems to be really credible, it specifies many experiments around the globe, and takes into account all of the respective scientists's personal stories and how it could have affected their thought process and methods. The author comments on other experiments and either agrees with their results or hypothesizes a new experiment to test the results further and maybe get different ones. It was nice how he decided to do that since it showed that he was really engaging with the experiments instead of parroting someone else's work.