You, Me, and Mirror Neurons (part 1)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Yesterday morning, a friend graciously thanked me for making the effort to understand her.
Then she remarked, casually, that maybe understanding other people isn’t such much of an effort, from me.
I’d never thought about it before, but she’s right. An empathic response comes very naturally for me. When watching or listening to someone, I just shift into their perspective, and something about the way I communicate seems to make people feel understood, at least judging by an informal survey of friends.
Being me (and rather self-obsessed) I immediately started wondering *why* this is easier for me. What makes me different? (Don’t you ever wonder that? How and why you’re different from other people?)
Anyway, I remembered a study I’d recently run across on mirror neurons, and began to wonder about the empathic implications of these curious braincells.
Mirror neurons are interesting things. They’re a type of motor neuron, and like all motor neurons, they send electrical impulses. Mirror neurons fire just like other neurons, sending signals when, for instance we make a certain action (like raising our hand).
But mirror neurons don’t just fire when we perform an action; they also fire when we watch someone else do that same action. If you raise your hand, certain neurons in your brain fire. But if you see another person raise their hand, the mirror neurons in your brain will fire just as if *you* had raised your own hand.
It’s all very monkey see, monkey do-ish.
It makes sense that this reflection-of-others neural process might make people more sensitive to others, making us able to put ourselves in the place of another, and to understand and feel their viewpoint.
Could differences in mirror neurons explain why one person (me) might be better at understanding other people’s (my friend’s) motivations and feelings? If so, how and why are my mirror neurons and their firing different?
Thus began the meandering research project that ate my weekend.
