Mirror neurons online December 12, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Community , trackbackYou’ve probably heard of mirror neurons by now. But do you they they are applicable in an online environment? Or do you have to be in proximity or at least have a visual stimulus before they will fire up and engender empathy or other related feelings.
The discussion started up on the onlinefacilitation yahoogroup and I copied my contribution to a wiki page because it needs rephrasing sometime but there’s also a related discussion on the valuenetworks googlegroup which I nearly missed.
The problem with the kind of biological research necessary to learn more about this subject is that it would probably require somebody to sit at a computer chacking their egroups and engaging in distributed discourse whilst having electrodes strapped to the appropriate part of their brain. Could be a little distracting, but I suppose you’d get used to it after a few days.
Another possibility which is already well underway by all accounts, would be to collect qualitative data from participants of a purely text based community after a few ventures into a 3d graphical medium such as Secondlife. Do some of them report an improvement in rapport? What about those who don’t - are they getting it from text anyway?
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
Hi Andy: Glad you’re “into” mirror neurons too. Thanks for the flash of connection - mirror neurons and SecondLife - both areas of research and development for me…gave me a great idea for virtual neural marketing.
Thanks. Cole