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Mirror Neurons and Empathy
By Richard | August 21, 2007
How Your Brain Allows You to Walk In Another’s Shoes
Robert Lee Hotz | Science Journal, Wall Street Journal
In subtle patterns of brain cells, researchers are exploring empathy — an essential intuition that helps us understand our fellow human beings.
These unusual brain circuits are mirrors in the mind that reflect the actions and intentions of others as if they were our own, new research has revealed. Scientists call them mirror neurons. They allow us to feel a loved one’s pain, or suffer the pangs of appetite when we hear someone crunch into an apple. They are a reason we are moved by the images of art and can feel the appeal of characters in a book. They supply the voyeuristic thrill of pornography, a German brain-scanning team documented. They also are a hidden persuader in advertising, UCLA researchers said.
And if researchers in Europe and the U.S. are correct, these cells are subconscious seeds of social behavior that also can be manipulated to boost sales, generate fads or influence political beliefs.
“The mirror system gives us some kind of open-mindedness, a propensity to understand others and other cultures,” said neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is pioneering the study of these cells in human brains. In a way researchers are only beginning to understand, the cells physically embody what University of Chicago psychologist Jean Decety called “the sense of similarity.”
Located in the brain’s motor cortex, which orchestrates movement and muscle control, the cells fire when we perform an action and also when we watch someone else do the same thing. When someone smiles or wrinkles her nose in distaste, motor cells in your own brain associated with those expressions resonate in response like a tuning fork, triggering a hint of the feeling itself.
“The more empathetic you are, the stronger your mirror neuron response,” said Dr. Iacoboni, whose book on the phenomenon, “Mirroring People,” is scheduled for publication next year. MORE
Topics: In The News, Mirror Neurons |