You, Me and Mirror Neurons (part 2)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
In a fearless quest to find answers, I dove into the wilderness of Google for what I thought was light research. In the end, it wasn’t light at all. I found myself wading through research papers that were complicated and fascinating… and in the process lost a few things I should have linked to. Oops.
It turns out that I wasn’t the first to think mirror neurons might be linked to empathy and such — Many not-so-layman-types (ie: neuroscientists) have done research on the topic of mirror neurons and empathy. Their studies show that mirror neurons don’t just react to perceived motion; they react to perceived sensation, too.
If a person sees someone being poked with a needle, the mirror neurons associated with pain light up, just as if he had been poked.
If a person is shown an image of someone else reacting to a noxious smell, neurons light up in the same part of the olfactory area of the brain as if they’d been exposed to the scent. Mirror neurons react to images of touch (a feather duster on skin) sounds ( like laughter) and as already mentioned, to witnessed actions, like grasping an object.
Even more interesting, the reaction of mirror neurons increases when there is a discernible intent behind the observed actions… while the brain will react to an image of a hand holding a coffee cup, it reacts *more* if the image is clearly of a hand grasping a coffee in order to drink it.
Likewise, when the subject is familiar with the action being demonstrated, the reactions are stronger - a dancer’s mirror neurons are more excited by witnessing dance moves he or she is familiar with, than with those they don’t know how to perform.
But these responses aren’t triggered when subjects witness robots grasps an object: the mirror neurons are apparently only attuned to input that reflects our own biological image.
The type of mirroring that goes on in these neurons is different than the intellectual exercise of imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes. It isn’t conscious: the mirror neurons of your brain automatically and involuntarily reacts as if you were the other person, so that your brain experiences a recreation of what you witness other people feeling.
How cool is that? Empathy with a neurological basis.
