Joachim Bauer Warum ich fühle, was du fühlst. Intuitive Kommunikation und das Geheimnis der Spiegelneurone (Why I Feel What You Feel: Intuition and the Mystery of the Mirror Neuron) Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, April 2005. 224 pp. ISBN 3-455-09511-9 A mother watches while her baby is given an injection and flinches herself as the needle goes in. A little girl smiles as her father puts his boots on – she knows now that they are going out to play. A man grimaces in pain as his girlfriend packs her bags – this time, he realizes, she is leaving him for good. Such reactions may seem natural and obvious, but why do they occur and how do we understand each other? This question is one that neuroscientists and psychologists have grappled with for years. But in 1996 a team of scientists at the University of Parma came up with a fascinating explanation. Starting with experiments examining the behaviour of apes, they found a new group of neurons that reacted when individuals performed new tasks. Unremarkable enough. But what they also found was that these same neurons also reacted when an individual perceived someone else doing the task. The scientists called this group ‘mirror neurons’, because they seemed to be simulating or reacting in sympathy to the behaviour of others, allowing us to ‘feel what others feel’, thus explaining the mystery of how we can read others’ minds. In this lively and compelling book Joachim Bauer records the discovery of mirror neurons and what flows from it – in particular what mirror neurons may explain about us as emotional, social beings. He demonstrates their profound influence, via the activity of mimicry, in the development of emotional intelligence in children. He looks at their role in the origins of language – both mirror neurons and language ‘replace’ action and are located in the same part of the brain – and at their possible connection with illnesses such as autism, which may be explained by a malfunctioning mirror neural network. He considers love, a state in which our mirroring and empathy system appears to go into overdrive, and he looks at the role of mirror neurons in education, medicine and psychotherapy. In short, mirror neurons may have profound implications for our understanding of what makes us human. Mirror neurons are a hot scientific topic, on which surprisingly little has so far appeared in print. Here is the book to fill that gap.