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Smart Reads: Gregory Hickok’s ‘The Myth of Mirror Neurons’
Mirror neurons seemed like a revelation when they were first discovered—cells that light up both when you move to grasp an object and when you see someone else do it. Theories about the importance of mirror neurons began to proliferate, faster than the evidence accumulated, and now University of California Irvine cognitive scientist Gregory Hickok has taken it upon himself to throw cold water on all this overexuberance in his new book, The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition. We chatted with Hickok recently about what the scientific evidence says—and doesn’t say—about these fascinating cells.
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