The Influence Of Mirror Neurons

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In the day of social media, people seem to create more temporary short term goals without even realizing it. There are motivational quotes and pictures of people that are in optimal shape which are posted all over social media sites such as Facebook. In my opinion these pages attract many users because of something called mirror neurons cells located in the brain. The popularity of sites which provide motivational quotes and pictures of in shape people appeal to a person’s mirror neuron cells because it temporarily allows the person to see them as achieving a goal which they have not actually achieved.
Mirror neurons are thought to be the parts of the brain which allow humans and some animals to empathize by imagining ourselves in the situation …show more content…

When viewing an image, the context behind the image is often unavailable or obscured; therefore, viewing images of people who are in great shape often give people the motivation to work out, yet this is typically short lived. In my opinion, the reasoning behind this could be as a result of people lacking a long term motivation and not understanding the amount of work that is truly required to achieve their goal which their mind had easily created through mirror imaging. “As my discussion of empathy indicated, mirror neurons provide a plausible link between personal experience and the experience of others. People not only observe the pain and disgust of others, they experience their own versions of that pain and disgust, as shown by the mirroring activity in cortical regions such as the insula and anterior cingulate. (Thagard)” Based on that statement by Thagard, it seems probable that people recreate an image they have viewed, yet that image viewed could be skewed by their own perception of the image. Everyone has a greatly varying view on the objects they view throughout their day, so this would also be the case for images viewed on social …show more content…

This is problematic because all of these images are so readily visible, yet people do not understand how much work that person has gone through. Before social media sites like this, people would have used more real life models for motivation, which would allow for the brain to recreate a more accurate representations of the struggles the person went through in order to achieve their life goals. Yet when looking at an image, people lack the ability to understand the struggles that person faced and how long they took to become that person.
Another issue is Photoshop, so images people are looking at may not even be real and completely unrealistic. With the ability of the Photoshop to be so realistic, it seems that this could affect the mirror neurons to recreate scenarios which are not even real. It is so easy for people to just look at images and imagine themselves in their place with little to no effort. These images create a disconnect with the real world and can be frustrating for the people who are trying to get in shape and attempt to use these images as a way to stay

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