December 22 mirror neurons

Something I found interesting during my readings was mirror neurons. I had taken another psychology class called human relations and we discussed mirror neurons a lot during the course. I remember hearing a quote that said "when you smile, half is for yourself, and the other half is for the rest of the world." I thought this went a long with mirror neurons because we have all always heard that smiling is contagious. Well according to Berger, Mirror neurons are "brain cells that respond to actions preformed by someone else, as if the observer had done that action" (14). What I thought of was a child mimicking someone, but in reality this happens not just to be aggravating. A good example of the unconscious mirror neurons working is smiling. Have you ever had someone smile at you on a bad day, then you caught yourself smiling as well unconsciously. I bet you did not do that to be aggravating and mimic the person who smiled at you. This makes me think that we can transfer our emotions through mirror neurons, and maybe we should think twice about when we are in a bad mood what it is doing to those around us. Also, that if the people we are with are in a bad mood and it is getting to us, maybe we can use these mirror neurons to try and bring them up. Instead of letting them bring us down too, we can ignore their negative attitude and surpass it with a positive one. Maybe they will have a positive attitude in the end as well.