that when it came to recognizing the emotions of others, all participants' abilities were very similar and there was no key difference between the male and female subjects. Sleep paralysis Baland Jalal and V. S. Ramachandran have hypothesized that the mirror neuron system is important in giving rise to the intruder hallucination and out-of-body experiences during sleep paralysis. According to this theory, sleep paralysis leads to disinhibition of the mirror neuron system, paving the way for hallucinations of human-like shadowy beings. The deafferentation of sensory information during sleep paralysis is proposed as the mechanism for such mirror neuron disinhibition. The authors suggest that their hypothesis on the role of the mirror neuron system could be tested: Mirror neuron function, psychosis, and empathy in schizophrenia Recent research, which measured mu-wave suppression, suggests that mirror neuron activity is positively correlated with psychotic symptoms (i.e., greater mu suppression/mirror neuron activity was highest among subjects with the greater severity of psychotic symptoms). Researchers concluded that "higher mirror neuron activity may be the underpinning of schizophrenia sensory gating deficits and may contribute to sensory misattributions particularly in response to socially relevant stimuli, and be a putative mechanism for delusions and hallucinations." See also Associative sequence learning Common coding theory Emotional contagion Empathy Mirror-touch synesthesia Mirroring (psychology) Motor cognition Motor theory of speech perception On Intelligence Positron emission tomography Simulation theory of empathy Speech repetition Spindle neuron References Further reading External links (an overview of prominent research approaches based on interviews with Iacoboni, Hickok, Heyes and Gallese) Central nervous system neurons Cognitive neuroscience Behavioral neuroscience Motor control