In 2004, Steve Jobs, CEO, chairman, and co-founder of Apple, was strolling along Madison Avenue in New York City when he noticed something strange, and gratifying. Hip white earphones (remember, back then most earphones came in basic boring black). Looping and snaking out of people’s ears, dangling down across their chests, peeking out of pockets and purses and backpacks. They were everywhere. “It was, like, on every block, there was someone with white headphones, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, it’s starting to happen,’ ” Jobs, who’d recently launched his company’s immensely successful iPod, was quoted as saying.
2004年，蘋果公司(Apple)的首席執(zhí)行官、主席兼創(chuàng)始人史蒂夫·喬布斯(Steve Jobs)在紐約城的麥迪遜大街(Madison Avenue)上散步時，發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個奇怪的但令他欣慰的現(xiàn)象——全白色的耳機（要知道，在此之前幾乎所有的耳機都是沉悶的黑色）繞在人們的脖子上、塞在耳朵里、掛在胸前；或者時不時地從人們的衣服口袋、手提包或是背包里露出來，無處不在。喬布斯說：“在每一個街區(qū)，我都會看到一些人戴著白色耳機，然后我就想‘天哪，白色耳機的時代到來了’?！?不久之前，喬布斯剛剛發(fā)布了蘋果公司極其成功的產(chǎn)品——iPod。
You could term the popularity of the iPod (and its ubiquitous, iconic white headphones) a fad. Some might even call it a revolution. But from a neuroscientific point of view, what Jobs was seeing was nothing less than the triumph of a region of our brains associated with something called the mirror neuron.
你可以將iPod的流行（以及無處不在的、標志性的白色耳機）看作是一種時尚。有些人甚至稱其為一次革命。但是從神經(jīng)科學(xué)的觀點來看，喬布斯所看到的，其實是我們的大腦中連接“鏡像神經(jīng)元”(mirror neuron)的區(qū)域發(fā)揮了作用。
In 1992, an Italian scientist named Giacomo Rizzolatti and his research team in Parma, Italy, were studying the brains of a species of monkey—the macaque—in the hopes of finding out how the brain organizes motor behaviors. Specifically, they were looking at a region of the macaque brain known by neuroscientists as F5, or the premotor area, which registers activity when monkeys carry out certain gestures, like picking up a nut. Interestingly, they observed that the macaques’ premotor neurons would light up not just when the monkeys reached for that nut, but also when they saw other monkeys reaching for a nut—which came as a surprise to Rizzolatti’s team, since neurons in premotor regions of the brain typically don’t respond to visual stimulation.
1992年，一名叫作賈科莫-里佐拉蒂(GiacomoRizzolatti)的意大利科學(xué)家以及他在帕爾瑪?shù)难芯啃〗M對一個猴子物種——短尾猿的大腦進行了研究——旨在發(fā)現(xiàn)大腦是如何組織運動行為的。具體來講，他們研究了短尾猿大腦中的“F5區(qū)域”，也叫作“運動前區(qū)”(premotor area)，該區(qū)域負責(zé)記錄短尾猿所執(zhí)行的某一活動，例如“撿起一粒堅果”。有趣的是，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，在短尾猿撿到堅果時，它們大腦中的運動前區(qū)會產(chǎn)生活動；而在看到其他短尾猿撿到堅果時，這個區(qū)域同樣也會活動——這對里佐拉蒂研究小組來說是一個驚奇的發(fā)現(xiàn)，因為在通常情況下，大腦運動前區(qū)的神經(jīng)元不會對視覺刺激產(chǎn)生反應(yīng)。
On one particularly hot summer afternoon, Rizzolatti and his team observed the strangest thing of all when one of Dr. Rizzolatti’s grad students returned to the lab after lunch holding an ice cream cone, and noticed that the macaque was staring at him, almost longingly. And as the grad student raised the cone to his mouth and took a tentative lick, the electronic monitor hooked up to the macaque’s premotor region fired—bripp, bripp, bripp.
在一個炎熱的午后，里佐拉蒂和他的小組觀察到了一個最奇怪的現(xiàn)象：里佐拉蒂博士的一名學(xué)生在午飯后拿著一個蛋卷冰激淋回到實驗室，他發(fā)現(xiàn)短尾猿正用渴望的眼神凝視著他。而當這名學(xué)生拿起冰激淋并伸出舌頭舔了一口時，連接短尾猿運動前區(qū)的電子監(jiān)控器突然發(fā)出了“嗶嗶嗶”的響聲。
The monkey hadn’t done a thing. It hadn’t moved its arm or taken a lick of ice cream; it wasn’t even holding anything at all. But simply by observing the student bringing the ice cream cone to his mouth, the monkey’s brain had mentally imitated the very same gesture.
短尾猿并沒有任何舉動。它既沒有移動手臂也沒有伸過頭來舔冰激淋；甚至它手里什么都沒有拿。但是，僅僅是看著那名學(xué)生把冰激淋送到嘴里，短尾猿的大腦就模仿了相同的動作。
This amazing phenomenon was what Rizzolatti would eventually dub “mirror neurons” at work—neurons that fire when an action is being performed and when that same action is being observed. “It took us several years to believe what we were seeing,” he later said.
最終，里佐拉蒂將這一驚人的現(xiàn)象稱為“鏡像神經(jīng)元”的作用——當某一行為被執(zhí)行、并且同樣的行為被監(jiān)測到時，該神經(jīng)元便會被激活。里佐拉蒂后來說：“我們花了好幾年的時間去相信我們發(fā)現(xiàn)的這一現(xiàn)象?！?/span>
