Mirror neurons: emotional infection

Many people know that in pairs, happily living together, people with each passing year more and more like each other. This does not mean that in the spent side by side during their noses or chins become identical. Just one of them so often and accurately, "mirrors" the expression of the partner entity that hundreds of tiny muscular connections with the skin slightly altered facial features.


The mechanism behind this transformation, allows to understand how we feel, that we feel. Some of the things described below are still only a hypothesis, but they shed light on the most intimate observation of everyday consciousness.



Mirror neurons consciousness in
In the mid 1990s, a group of Italian scientists using implanted electrodes to monitor individual neurons studied the premotor cortex of monkeys.

When the monkey eat peanuts, certain breakdowns electrode. This was not surprising. But the incident further changed the trajectory of consciousness research. When the monkey simply watched as one of the researchers chewed walnut, it works the same motor neurons. Also discovered neural networks were activated only by deliberate action on monitoring.

In the future, the system of mirror neurons found in humans. It is considered the basis for empathy. Since the perception of the basic behavioral intentions improved prefrontal cortex allow humans to mentally mapping the consciousness of others. The brain uses sensory information to the representation of other people's consciousness in the same way as the sensor data through image of the surrounding environment are created.

Most interesting is that mirror neurons respond only to intentional activity, a predictable sequence of actions or a particular purpose. If I just raise my hand and wave it, your mirror neurons did not respond to it. But if I make some kind of action, you are able to predict from past experience, your mirror neurons "calculate" my intention to implement it.

So, when I raise my hand to the cup, you can imagine at the synaptic level, what I'm going to drink from it. Moreover, the mirror neurons in the premotor cortex of the frontal zone will take to make you thirsty, too. When we see a particular action, we are prepared to simulate it.

Mirror neurons, empathy and emotional infection

This is a primitive explanation of why we suddenly wakes thirst, when there is something they drink, or why yawning attacks, when someone yawns. It is much more difficult to uncover how mirror neurons help us to understand the essence of the culture and how the overall behavior brings us and our consciousness.

Domestic card by mirror neurons, work automatically: they require no awareness or any effort on our part. We reveal the birth sequence and produce maps in the brain or the inner state of the intentions of other people.

Moreover, such a reflectivity is cross-modal, that is, it works for all sensory channels, not just for the view, therefore, sounds and tactile sensations, smells and so the same tune our internal state of another person. By embedding the consciousness of others in their own patterns of impulses, our mirror neurons are the basis for "mayndsayt cards».

Resonance Systems

The resonant system includes related mirror neurons (SPP), the upper part of the temporal cortex, insula (not visible in the picture, but he connects the inner part with the limbic area) and the medial prefrontal cortex

On the basis of sensory information we are able to not only mirror the behavioral intentions of other people, but also their emotional state. Not only do we imitate the behavior of others, but also to enter into resonance with their feelings - that is, the thinking with the internal flow of consciousness. We feel not only their next action, but also the emotional energy, set the direction of their actions.

A similar mechanism is involved in the process of child development. If behavioral patterns that we see in the parents, are unambiguous, then, knowing what happens next, we relaxed we put this sequence on the internal card.

If the parents' behavior often puts us into a blind alley and hard to read, our neural pathways will create a distorted map. So, from early childhood major neural pathways are formed mayndsayta or stable foundation or on shaky ground.

Knowing myself, I understand you
One of the ideas discussed in our interdisciplinary research group was that we create intentions maps using mirror neurons are located in the cortex, and then transfer this information to the departments under the bark.

The neural circuit, called islet brain performs the role of a highway connecting the mirror neurons and limbic areas, which, in turn, send messages to the brain stem and the rest of the body. Thus we achieve a physiological resonance with other people: our breathing, blood pressure and heart rate can rise or fall in sync with the performance of another person

. These signals from the body, the brain stem and limbic structures are then sent back to the island and the medial prefrontal cortex.

I began to call this complex chain - from mirror neurons in subcortical areas and back to the medial prefrontal area - the resonant circuits. It is a path that connects us with each other.

Remember what happens when you are at a party. If you come to the merry group, you will likely also smiled before you hear the joke. If you're at a dinner with people who have recently lost loved ones, even if they have nothing to say about this, you may feel chest tightness, dryness in the throat and tears looms.

Scientists call such a state of emotional challenge. The internal state of others - from the joy and playfulness to the sadness and fear - a direct impact on our health

. Mirror neurons, empathy and emotional infection

The mechanism of infection sometimes causes us not to interpret too objectively unrelated events: talking to a man in a depression, the severity of the other, we also perceive as sadness

. Psychotherapists very important to remember this bias. Otherwise, the session with the previous client will be reflected on our inner state so that we are not sufficiently receptive to a new patient, which is required to establish contact.

The ability to sense the state of another person depends on how well we know his own. Brain island carries up these resonances in the medial prefrontal cortex, which compiled the map of our inner world. Therefore, we feel another person's feelings, experiencing their own.

It helps to understand in terms of anatomy, why people, the best feeling your body more capable of empathy. A key role in this system plays an islet brain when we experience its internal state, the main way to resonate with others too open

. Consciousness is revealed to us in the process of growing up - is the internal state of the one who takes care of us. We made a sound, and he smiles, we laugh - and his face lights up with a smile too. So first we perceive itself through its reflection in the other.

One of the most interesting ideas discussed in our research group, was the fact that our resonating with other self-awareness occurs earlier. From the point of view of the development and evolution of the current neural pathways responsible for self-awareness, can be based on more ancient ways of resonating, strengthen us in the social environment.

How then can we distinguish where the "I", and where "you"? Members of the group suggested that we are able to adjust the location and patterns of pulses prefrontal images to perceive its own consciousness. Increased sensitivity to their own bodily sensations, combined with a decrease in the response of mirror neurons may help us to determine: the tears of mine, not yours, that my anger, and not your

. These arguments are likely to seem entirely devoid of philosophical and applied sense, but only as long as you do not find yourself in the midst of conflict, where everyone is trying to figure out who comes from anger. If I, the therapist, do not trace the line between me and another person, then my feelings overwhelm customers, and I lose my ability to help them and quickly burn out.

When the resonance becomes really a mirror when we confuse ourselves with others, you lost objectivity. Resonance requires that we have seen a clear distinction and remember who we are, yet without losing the connection with the other person. We allow people to influence our inner state, but we do not identify with them. It will take more research to understand exactly how the "mayndsayt card" account for these differences, but the main points are already clear. Energy and information flows that we feel within ourselves and others involve the resonance path and thereby activate a mental perception.

Thinking about ways of resonance, I think two important lessons. The first is that the awareness of the state of our body - sensation in the heart and stomach, breathing rhythm - this is an important source of knowledge. The flow coming out of the brain of the island, retrieves information and energy flow, affecting the subcortical awareness, causes our reasoning and solutions. We can not successfully ignore subcortical sources. But to understand them - so closer to a clear mayndsaytu

. The second lesson is that the relationship with the people woven into the fabric of our inner world. We get to know your consciousness through interaction with others. The perception of our mirror neurons and the response they create happen overnight, and we often do not realize it. But taking the neural reality of our interconnected lives, we are able to get a clear understanding of who we are, what we are affected and how we, in turn, can affect their lives.

Daniel Siegel. Mayndsayt: the new science of personal transformation