Eliciting a reaction (Image: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty)

BRAIN cells that may underlie our ability to empathise with others have been detected directly in people for the first time.

Monkey brains have been shown to contain so-called “mirror” neurons, which fire both when the animal performs an action and when it observes others performing that action. Until now, the only evidence that our brains contain similar neurons has been indirect, derived from functional MRI scans.

Now Roy Mukamel at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues have observed mirror neurons directly in humans. They used electrodes to record brain …