When you see a baby and you perform a task such as sticking out your tongue out, the baby in return will stick out their tongue. That is what a mirror neuron does, it reads the action and movement which fires the premotor neurons that represents the baby's tongue and priming activates the related motor cortex neurons that project the baby's tongue. This happens a lot when someone yarns, you feel yourself trying to hold back a yarn after you see someone else yawn. The say it's "like monkey see monkey do", which is interesting because the research was done on monkeys.
Mirror neurons are neurons located in area 46 within the frontal cortex of the brain, our working memory and what enables us to transfer information from visual to motor. This area can also be called the visuo-spatial sketch pad. The sketch pad is the area that holds pictures sounds, smells, and ideo-motor images, images that enable us to view and action and then imitate or repeat the perceived action.
Perceptual-motor coupling, which is facilitated in the vidua-spatial sketchpad, is considered the key to motor learning and the reproduction of a perceived action. When an individual performs a highly skilled specific action different neurons will fire in response to that action, different neurons fire in response to different actions. Researchers found a mirror neuron will also fire in an individual who is simply watching an action. This was the study found and researched on monkeys. Giaccamo Rizzolatti recorded that cell do fire when a monkey performs a specific task, but it is not only the monkey perform the task that exhibits neuronal activity but the other monkeys watching do as well. This study is what gives humans the basis for understanding the "enigmatic" aspects of imitation and or motor learning. .
According to the research the learning and improvements of motor skill performance, is fueled by the working memory and he visuo-spatial sketch pad which fires the mirror neurons to move muscles and reproduce a perceived action.
