Mirror Neurons, Dalai Lama and a few questions

Recently watched this video on youtube. Ramachandran briefly talked about his work on mirror neurons seeking a response from Dalai Lama. Dalai Lama asks a very insightful question.  It goes somewhat like this - "Do the mirror neurons fire in your brain merely by looking at another person being subjected to a sensory experience, or must you be watching attentively for this to happen?"  Ramachandran says you must be watching attentively. This means that if you are watching mindlessly, it may not happen.

The two videos give rise to many other questions.  I am listing the questions in the hope that some of you who may have explored this body of knowledge in depth, will be able to reply.

• Is vision central to the working of mirror neurons?  What happens to a blind person who can not see what is being done and to which part of another person's body, if the other person does not provide any auditory clues like a sigh or a cry of pain?  What if he does?
• Will the mirror neurons also fire if you are not watching the real action but a video of it?  Cinema goers  may feel that empathy is more pronounced in this case.  Is it merely because of the focused attention or do the dramatization, the closeup look and the appropriate background music also help?
• There are means other than vision through which we can make another person feel some of what we are feeling.  For example a blood curdling shriek, or a recording of it, may evoke the same horror in the listener that the person who shrieked felt or acted out.  It would seem that both sight and sound can do this. Is there any other way in which the empathetic feelings be evoked in another person?
• Can the mirror neurons make me feel the Buddha kind of peace if I keep attentively looking at an idol of meditating Buddha?  That is, can mirror neurons mimic the inner feelings of the observed person as reflected on his face?
• When another person is touched he can also feel the texture, temperature of the object touching him as well how hard it is pressing against his skin. Can these feelings get conveyed to the attentive observer?
• Many people are reported to have had out of body experiences (OBE).  It may be taken that though they were receiving sensory inputs of sight and sound, their whole body was anesthetized.  It will be interesting to ask them if they felt all the sensations of the people whom they saw while having this OBE.
• What happens if you have your hand anesthetized and watch it being tickled?

Beware of Credit Card Frauds

As I was taking my car out on the second day after Dipawali, i.e., 15-Nov-2012, I was distracted by my phone which announced arrival of 15 messages.  I thought these must be delayed Dipawali greetings and that I could defer viewing them.  But then I opened the message box on impulse.  Out came the Jack-in-the-box and hit me with full force.  All the 15 messages were for successful transactions on my credit card!  All the transactions appeared to be carried out on the Internet and they were all done within the span of one hour with the midnight hour of 14th and 15th November in the middle.  The last transaction was for Rs.200/= for draining out the credit limit to the hilt.

So I parked the car right outside my house and went back in.  A lot of telephone calls were made to Bobcards and umpteen mails exchanged.  I also visited two websites where several of the transactions were made and left complaint notes using a form available on them.  One of them promptly acknowledged the message and also charged back the amount saying that investigations showed that it was a fraudulent transaction.  The other asked me to request my card company to talk to them.  All these messages were passed on to Bobcards.

It seems that my password for internet card transactions was reset by the miscreants and then used for the fraudulent transactions.  Now the Verified-by-Visa (VBV) implementation by Bobcards definitely lacks security.  So if you have forgotten your password or are a miscreant who has got the card number, CVV and expiry date but doesn't has the password, the only additional piece of data required for resetting the password is cardholder's date of birth!  All these data are available with the card company and its service providers and if a staff is so inclined he can easily carry out the password reset operation.  I inquired with some other banks' customers.  They have given me to understand that they have to use an OTP (One Time Password) for password reset.  The OTP is sent to them on their registered mobile number.  This security check is missing in the Bobcards implementation, and this weakness is sure to attract cyber criminals in hordes.

So be careful with your Bobcard.  I am relying on the following (picked up from the Visa website):

Zero Liability

Shop anywhere with absolutely no risk

Your peace of mind and protection are paramount to Visa. Visa's Zero Liability policy is our guarantee that you won’t be held responsible for fraudulent charges made with your card or account information

In fact Visa goes on to say:

Count on quick resolution and provisional credit if your card is lost or stolen. ¹

If your account is compromised, Visa is committed to setting things right without further aggravation or inconvenience to you. Visa’s cardholder protection policy requires all financial institutions issuing Visa products to extend provisional credit for losses from unauthorized card use within 5 business days of notification of the loss.