Reflecting on the mind

Abstract

When a paradigm-shattering discovery is made in science, it goes through three stages before gaining acceptance. First, people don't believe it; second, they claim it is of no interest; and third, they say that they have always known it. The discovery of mirror neurons in the early 1990s by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese, Marco Iacoboni and others, has been through all three stages. Happily, the idea seems to have emerged unscathed, judging from Mirrors in the Brain.