Thursday, January 27, 2005
Mirrors
There was a crazy episode of NOVA on PBS Tuesday night which discussed (among other things) empathy and where it comes from.* Turns out, humans are ridiculously good at empathizing with other people, to the extent that (for instance) sports fans often feel the same degree of dejection, anger, and exuberance as the actual players on the field. But that's not the crazy part, since it's been known for a while. The crazy part is that researchers actually went out and found the part of the brain that's responsible for making this happen.
In this newly-discovered region of the brain, neurons fire in exactly the same way whenever a certain event happens---irregardless of whether you are doing them or someone else is. If you smile, it fires in a "happy" pattern. If you look at a bunch of happy, smiling kids, it also fires in a "happy" pattern. If you look at a bunch of dirty, miserable refugees, it fires in exactly the same way as it would if you were a dirty, miserable refugee yourself. Neurons in this region turn what happens in the outside world into experiences that feel like your very own, and so are called "mirror neurons."
But mirror neurons wouldn't be very useful if they just hung out in some random corner of the brain. As a matter of fact, they're directly hardwired into your emotional cortex, meaning that you feel genuinely happy when looking at smiling people, and genuinely terrible when looking at suffering people. Even though a tiny voice inside your head might be telling you that the actors on the screen are actually a) just fine, and b) getting paid millions, they can still make you cry if something really bad appears to happen to them.
What's really fascinating about this part of the brain is that it's the most basic social construct within us. Not only does it not make sense for hermits, but it also actively encourages social groups by counterbalancing the aggressiveness and competitiveness that we have acquired through natural selection. In other words, it results in us helping each other out, because other people having good things happen to them makes us feel good, too.
And that's really mind-boggling. Before morals, before language, before the Stone Age (monkeys have a similar, weaker region in their brains) people still helped each other out because it made them feel good. How awesome is that?
*http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html
In this newly-discovered region of the brain, neurons fire in exactly the same way whenever a certain event happens---irregardless of whether you are doing them or someone else is. If you smile, it fires in a "happy" pattern. If you look at a bunch of happy, smiling kids, it also fires in a "happy" pattern. If you look at a bunch of dirty, miserable refugees, it fires in exactly the same way as it would if you were a dirty, miserable refugee yourself. Neurons in this region turn what happens in the outside world into experiences that feel like your very own, and so are called "mirror neurons."
But mirror neurons wouldn't be very useful if they just hung out in some random corner of the brain. As a matter of fact, they're directly hardwired into your emotional cortex, meaning that you feel genuinely happy when looking at smiling people, and genuinely terrible when looking at suffering people. Even though a tiny voice inside your head might be telling you that the actors on the screen are actually a) just fine, and b) getting paid millions, they can still make you cry if something really bad appears to happen to them.
What's really fascinating about this part of the brain is that it's the most basic social construct within us. Not only does it not make sense for hermits, but it also actively encourages social groups by counterbalancing the aggressiveness and competitiveness that we have acquired through natural selection. In other words, it results in us helping each other out, because other people having good things happen to them makes us feel good, too.
And that's really mind-boggling. Before morals, before language, before the Stone Age (monkeys have a similar, weaker region in their brains) people still helped each other out because it made them feel good. How awesome is that?
*http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html
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