Mirror Neurons: what they teach us about connection…

When watching your favorite sport do you feel like you are apart of it?

When watching someone cry do you feel their sadness? 

When seeing someone in pain, do you also feel that pain to some extent? 

When you see someone move, does it make you want to move as well?

The basic idea: when you focus on another’s movements, emotions, intentions, your brain lights up automatically in around 10% the same way… 

In 1992 while studying a monkey’s brain with electrodes attached to the motor area (the area that lights up when movements by the body are made), researchers found by accident that not only would the neurons become activated by the monkey reaching out to pick up a piece of food, but also when the researchers made a similar movement.  Later the same team published a paper that showed that there were mirror neurons responding to mouth actions and facial expressions.  Further studies confirmed that around 10% of neurons in certain areas of a monkey’s brain had mirror abilities.  Later these studies were expanded to humans.  

A recent study summarizing the data of 125 fMRI studies of humans (brain imaging that shows what is active), found that there were many areas of the brain with this capacity.  (Molenberghs, 2012)  Beyond seeing actions performed by others and having them represented in our brain, there are 3 other areas of the brain that are activated in a similar fashion: 

1. Ever wonder why watching people embrace enthusiastically at an airport is fun to watch?  When you observe someone being touched, a similar area in your brain (the secondary somatosensory cortex) activates in a similar way as the person being touched.  (Keysers, 2004) 
2. When you only hear something, like someone cracking open a peanut, how do you know what is occurring?  Another study showed that there was a similar brain circuit firing in both doing the action and hearing it and just hearing it.   This study also showed that those with higher scores on perspective taking (ability to slip into another’s shoes) had stronger activation of mirror areas! (Gazzola, 2006)   
3. When we watch someone grieve at a funeral, ever wonder why we feel their sadness?  When you feel emotion, you experience the emotion in your brain, like they are to a lesser extent.  (Gaag, 2007)

Now researchers are saying that the mirror neuron system is involved with: 

• Understanding another’s actions and intentions

• Neural basis for the human capacity of empathy

• Learning new skills by imitation and rehearsing 

Why do I care about this?  Why am I passionate about this?  What is my story here?

Prior to doing training in therapy most of the mirror neuron signals I was picking up were unconscious and out of my awareness.  My first impatient psychiatric month as a medical student I became depressed, likely because I was picking up my patient’s suicidal depression and had no way of processing it or working through it on a conscious level.  Once I realized that I could feel to some extent what other people were feeling, I started to pay attention to how my subjective experience changed, moment to moment, when I was with another person.  Over time this has led me to more accurately understand what another person feels.  To do this best, I have to empty and clear out all the noise of my own thoughts and really focus on the person in front of me.  Time alone in nature, being in therapy, embracing my spiritual life and having good friends to process things with, helps me do this. 

To differentiate if I am experiencing something of my own or picking something up I frequently ask for feedback.  For example, if after sitting with someone who says they have been stressed, I feel tightness in the back of my head, I might ask, “where do you feel the stress in your body?”  The person might say, “I feel it in the back of my head, especially right now” which allows me to know why I feel that tension myself.  

What to do with the information:

Then from there, get in touch with what it might be like to experience such tension.  Then reflect back to them what that feels like to you.  For example, you might really feel like it would be hard to live with such tension.  You could then say, “I feel it must be hard to live with such tension, the stress must be significant.”  

I believe from really paying attention we can better understand a person’s thoughts, needs, feelings, desires and goals.  Connectedness comes from someone feeling that you understand them on these levels.