Vilayanur Ramachandran : The neurons that shaped civilization

Vilayanur Ramachandran at TEDIndia 2009  (transcript)
The neurons that shaped civilization
Summary
You must think about why neurons and civilization are related in the title.

Neurons are on the front of the brain frontal lobes and it's called ordinary motor command neurons. Those neurons will fire when a person performs a specific action and maybe about 20 percent of them will fire when you are looking at somebody else performing the same action like neuron is adopting the other person's point of view.

And then it leads to involving imitation and emulation is important because those cause our great leap forward. There are sudden emergence and rapid spread of human skills like tool use, the use of fire, the use of shelters, language, the ability to read somebody else's mind, interpret that person's behavior and so on.

Those are the basis of the imitation of complex skills is what we call culture and is the basis of civilization.

We must think that the connection is surprising.
Thus when we think about the meaning of its own existence, consciousness, representation of self, what separates you from other human beings, what allows you to empathize with other human beings, and the emergence of culture and civilization, it requires neurons that is the foundation of a point of views.