Homo sapiens are fascinated to watch ourselves in mirrors, but we must watch others for models of how to behave.
We are empathetic and sympathetic, which allows us to share and understand the feelings of others.
Humans can connect with other people whom we are just watching. We get excited as sports spectators. We cry, laugh and scream at movies as we identify with the feelings and situations of the characters.
Neuroscience researchers have learned that we have special brain cells that are part of the empathy and sympathy that are two important hallmarks of humanity.
Called “mirror neurons,” these brain cells can connect to emotional centers that allow us to tune into others’ feelings and see inside their thoughts.
Mirror neurons are a set of brain cells on either side of the brain, in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex, that are fundamental to the way we connect with other people.
Giacomo Rizzolatti at the university in Parma, Italy, discovered them accidentally in 1996 while he was studying one particular neuron that fired when a monkey reached for a peanut.
When the monkey saw Rizzolatti himself reach for a peanut, the same neuron fired. It could not tell the difference between seeing and doing. They were one and the same, like an object and its image in a mirror.
Much research has been done in the short time since Rizzolatti’s monkey, and the discovery of mirror neurons is emerging as one of the most important discoveries of the decade. It appears to link many different areas of neuroscience, linguistics and behavioral sciences.
Certain areas of the brains of human subjects “lit up” while they tried to mimic a collection of expressions on photographs of faces. Viewing the same photos later while trying not to change their facial expressions lit up the same areas.
As it had been with the monkeys, seeing and doing caused activity in the regions of the brain where the mirror neurons reside.
We are intensely social creatures, but unlike other species, we developed culture and language, which continue to evolve as society and technology grow increasingly complex.
Culture comes from imitation of behavior learned from watching and interacting with others. We learn to enter into and share another’s feelings as we develop a sophisticated “theory of other minds.”
Throughout life our ability to identify with another person’s mental state grows as we share experiences and mimic one another’s behavior.
The efficacy of these connections between emotion and mirror neurons has been a key development in our evolution, and likely coincides with the origins of culture.
The better our distant ancestors became at watching, learning, copying and teaching, the faster cultural changes and technological developments occurred.
One area where the study of mirror neurons has great promise is with autism. An intelligent autistic person has a notable deficit of social interaction skills, such as avoiding eye contact, misunderstanding questions and weak empathy.
Most people’s brain waves look the same in electroencephalograms when doing as when watching, but those of autistic people are different.
Actors, singers and dancers know how to inspire feelings with movements and facial expressions, while salesmen know how to interpret the subtleties of ours. They are the practicing experts of this mirroring system.
