I wanted to mention something I thought was cool that I learned in my psych class today. I don't have any sources at the moment but I'll probably edit that in. Apparently the brain cannot distinguish between seeing someone do something and doing that yourself. This has to do with the pre-frontal evolutionary development functions of the brain and seems to be connected with a strong empathy function. But basically when you can watch someone do something, mentally it is the same as doing it yourself.

That is a cool point to take into consideration since we give a lot of attention in visualization and focus. The example given was that this brain function helped explain emotional responses to movies, which is visual empathy. It also works cross species to some degree because it was accidentally discovered in 2006 when a monkey saw a scientist pick up a peanut in front of it. The brain reacted the exact same as if it had preformed the action on a mental level and that was were scientists made the connection.

Just seemed like a useful piece to share and throws some light on some different theories.

This post has been edited by ☞Tomber☜: Aug 31 2010, 04:15 PM