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" The discovery of mirror neurons was made by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallase, and Marco Iaccoboni while recording from the brains of monkeys that performed certain goal-directed voluntary actions. For instance, when the monkey reached for a peanut, a certain neuron in its premotor cortex (in the frontal lobes) would fire. Another neuron would fire when the monkey pushed a button, a third neuron when he pulled a lever. The existence of such command neurons that control voluntary movements has been known for decades. Amazingly, a subset of these neurons had an additional peculiar property. The neuron fired not only (say) when the monkey reached for a peanut, but also when it watched another monkey reach for a peanut! These were dubbed “mirror neurons” or “monkey-see-monkey-do” neurons. "
― John Brockman , The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, Memory, Personality, and Happiness
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" The second thing, which is even better from where I sit, is that a science of mental illness developed such that we found that we could measure fuzzy states like sadness, alcoholism, and schizophrenia with psychometric precision. We developed a classification, a DSM, so that people in London and in Philadelphia can agree that they’re both seeing a bipolar depressive. "
― John Brockman , The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, Memory, Personality, and Happiness
