banana-related Fwd: Re: Musical Coupling and "mirror neurons"

[Doug Millison]

from the PSYART list today.  (Norm Holland is the moderator of that list. )

>Bill Benzon's powerful idea of music as coupling (and as a psychoanalytic
>critic, I enjoy the wording) reminds me of the concept of "mirror neurons"
>discovered by Rizzolatti's group in Parma.  The idea is that, if I watch you
>pick up a banana, the same neurons fire in my brain that are firing in
>yours to
>perform the action.  In that sense, our two brains are "coupled."
>
>Leslie Brothers sugggests in _Friday's Footprint_ that this is the basis for
>fiction and drama.  In reading about various human situations, our brains go
>through at least some of the same neuronal moves as if we were actually
>experiencing the loss, love affair, revenge, or whatever.
>
>In the situation of music, the existence of mirror neurons might mean that my
>brain fires the same neurons on hearing the music as the musician's when he or
>she plays the music and, in playing, hears it.  By the same token, the neurons
>in the brain of the person sitting next to me might be firing in the same
>pattern as mine.  In this way, audience members and musicians might all be
>coupled together (in a less than Freudian sense).
>
>                        --Best, Norm
>Norm Holland
>nholland at ufl.edu
>