Neuroscience and Gestures

When we discuss the human aspects of gestures, we return to the most unique object in nature: the human brain. As with all parts of our experience, the brain is involved with producing gestures. They represent a combination of higher-order thinking and motor function (i.e. movement). While the entire brain can be studied with reference to gestures, there is a particular type of neurons that we will address here. Mirror neurons are neurons that are active both when we perform a behavior and when we see the behavior performed by others. The existence of mirror neurons suggests that gestures represent a fundamental way of learning. We end the chapter with an experiment quantifying the gestures of dancers using motion-sensitive devices to generate music.