http://www.sciencemaster.com/columns/wesson/wesson_part_04.php"Thus, mirror neurons faithfully assist in "reading" the intentions of others, and they play a critically important, behind-the-scenes, role in empathy, imitation learning, deciphering facial cues, early language development, social skills and cultural rules by allowing us the ability to predict, mimic and understand the actions of others. During verbal discourse, even anticipating another person’s words as they complete a sentence seems to be associated with these newly discovered neurons."
"There is fairly clear and convincing evidence of what can occur when mirror neurons go awry. Without properly functioning mirror neurons, a child may not understand or empathize with other people and therefore, he will completely withdraw emotionally and socially from the rest of the world. These are the cardinal traits of the autistic child. Antisocial serial killers, interestingly, demonstrate little activity in the F5 region of the brain."