Why do we feel bad if we unwittingly offended someone? What makes us sacrifice our time, money, and sometimes more, to help a stranger in trouble?
The phenomenon of mirror neurons sheds light on one of the most mysterious abilities of our brain – the ability to empathize. Mirror neurons, special cells of the cerebral cortex, were discovered by the Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti in the 1990s in monkeys, and then discovered in humans1.
They work not only during the direct execution of some action, but also when we see (think) how others are doing the same. In other words, they allow us to “try on” the behavior of another person and thus understand it.
Responsiveness
It is known that if you smile at a baby, he will smile back at us. This is because its mirror neurons seem to reflect (hence their name) the facial expression of another person and the brain remembers it. In childhood, a child learns from parents about more complex emotions: a smile of joy, politeness, indulgence, self-satisfaction … And throughout his life in different situations, he will unconsciously smile (frown, be embarrassed, angry) just like his relatives did.
Through the mechanism of imitation, mirror neurons give us the opportunity to try on the behaviors adopted in our environment. This is how emotional intelligence is born – the ability of a person to express what he feels, as well as intuitively understand what another feels. Rizzolatti’s colleague Vittorio Gallese noticed that in children with autism spectrum disorders, alienation from others is associated with a disruption in the functioning of mirror neurons. Gallese believes that because of this, they cannot read the emotions of others, which means they are unable to understand their meaning.2.
familiar image
Why, then, do we have sympathy for some people, but not for others? It seems that one of the reasons is that our neurons can successfully “mirror” only those emotions and gestures that seem familiar and understandable to us.3. It is no coincidence that movie villains are often endowed with the traits of psychopaths: their emotions are incomprehensible to us and do not cause sympathy. The same effect is used in propaganda that portrays the enemy as almost devoid of human form.
Actual find
Today, there is a lot of controversy around exactly how mirror neurons work. Meanwhile, this phenomenon has become a real meme, and not only in the scientific community. Director Peter Brook ironically remarked that science has finally discovered what artists have understood for a long time: in order to evoke a response from the viewer, you need to let him feel in the place of the characters, literally feel their experiences. Who knows, maybe soon instead of “Understand me” we will say: “Turn on your mirror neurons.”
1 D. Rizzolatti, C. Sinigaglia “Mirrors in the brain: On the mechanisms of joint action and empathy” (Languages of Slavic Cultures, 2012).
2 Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 2013, vol. 55, № 1.
3 PLoS ONE, 2007, vol. 2, № 7.