In other words, the neurons in the premotor and motor areas of a monkey’s neocortex—those that control a monkey’s own movements—not only activated when they performed those specific fine motor skills, but also when they merely watched others perform them. Rizzolatti called these “mirror neurons.” Over the subsequent twenty years, Rizzolatti’s mirror neurons have been found in numerous behaviors (grasping, placing, holding, finger movements, chewing, lip smacking, sticking one’s tongue out), across multiple areas of the brain (premotor cortex, parietal lobe, motor cortex), and across numerous
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