Mirrors in the brain: on the mechanisms of synergy and empathy
Neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti is considered one of the world's leading experts on the problem of the so-called mirror neurons in the human brain, which play a special role both in the implementation of the simplest imitative motor acts and in social cognition and human behavior. In collaboration with the philosopher Corrado Sinigaglia, he wrote a book in which he shows how strong and durable the bonds that bind us to others - or, in other words, how wrong it would be to try to comprehend the Self without the We.
Some time ago, the outstanding theater director Peter Brook noted in an interview that with the discovery of mirror neurons, neuroscience finally took a step towards understanding what was known to theater people for a long time, namely, that all the efforts of the actor would have gone to dust if he was unable to overcome all linguistic and cultural barriers and share the sounds and movements produced by him with the viewer, who thereby becomes an active participant in the event and contributes to it. It is this complicity that is the focus of the theater and its development, and mirror neurons, which are excited both when we perform an action, and when we only observe its implementation, provide a biological explanation for the notorious complicity.
Brook's mention of mirror neurons is evidence of the tremendous interest that their unexpected properties have generated outside of physiology. Artists, psychologists, educators, sociologists, anthropologists were literally fascinated by mirror neurons, but only a few probably know the history of their discovery, as well as the experimental studies and theoretical assumptions that made this discovery, and only a few realize the consequences of the discovery made by scientists for the formation our ideas about the architecture and work of the brain.
Let's start with an analysis of everyday gestures - for example, we make when we reach for an object, take it in our hand, bring food to our mouth; we tend to underestimate the importance of these gestures only because they are too familiar to us. So neuroscience (along with other disciplines) for many years ranked the motor system, which plays a leading role in the implementation of these gestures, to the category of purely secondary ones.
For any action, from elementary acts such as grasping to more complex ones that require special skills, such as performing a sonata on the piano or certain dance steps, mirror neurons allow our brain to establish a correspondence between the action we observe and the action. which we can do, and thereby determine their meaning.
For decades, the notion that the motor areas of the cerebral cortex are designed to provide nothing more than executive functions has prevailed; it was believed that they did not have any perceiving, and even more so, cognitive value. In view of this, in explaining our motor behavior, the greatest difficulties were caused by the analysis of the entire variety of incoming sensory information and the isolation of the neural substrate of cognitive processes associated with the formation of intentions, beliefs, and desires. As soon as it was established for certain that the brain is able to select information coming from the outside and associate it with mental representations generated more or less automatically within it, the problem of movement was reduced to the mechanisms of its execution - in accordance with the classical scheme:
This scheme was sufficient as long as simplified concepts of the motor system dominated. However, these days they have undergone a significant change. We now know that this system is not only a mosaic of the frontal and parietal areas of the cortex, closely related to the visual, auditory, and tactile regions, but is also endowed with much more complex functional properties than previously thought.
In particular, it was found that in certain areas of the cortex there are neurons that are activated in response to purposeful motor acts (grasping, holding, manipulating objects, etc.), but in response to simple movements are not activated; moreover, they selectively respond to objects of different shapes and sizes, both in the case when we interact with these objects, and in the case when we just observe them. Apparently, these neurons are able to classify incoming sensory information based on the spectrum of potentially available actions, regardless of whether these actions are carried out in the future or not.
If we turn to the consideration of the mechanisms of the brain, it becomes immediately obvious how abstract are the explanations that we traditionally give to our behavior, habitually separating intentional actions from the simple physical movements necessary for their implementation. In truth, they are just as abstract as many of the experiments that are conducted to record the activity of neurons, in which animals - such as monkeys - are viewed as small robots, programmed to perform well-defined tasks. If, on the contrary, neural activity is recorded in the context of natural behavior, when the animal is given the opportunity to decide whether or not to take food and objects offered to him or not, it becomes obvious that at the cortical level the motor system ensures the execution of not individual movements, but actions. If you think about it, then all the same is true in relation to a person: we rarely move our hands and lips without purpose; usually there is an object that we want to reach, grab, or taste.
Artists, psychologists, educators, sociologists, anthropologists were literally fascinated by mirror neurons, but only a few probably know the history of their discovery, as well as the experimental studies and theoretical assumptions that made this discovery, and only a few realize the consequences of the discovery made by scientists for the formation our ideas about the architecture and work of the brain.
These actions, as long as they are purposeful and not just movements, form the basis of our impressions of the environment and endow objects with immediate meanings for us. The strict separation of perceptual, cognitive and motor processes is largely artificial: firstly, perception seems to be built into the dynamics of action, which makes it a much more complex process than previously thought, and in addition, the acting brain is also (and above all) the brain is understanding. This is a pragmatic, pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic form of understanding, which, however, does not diminish its importance in the least, because it is it that underlies many of our vaunted cognitive abilities.
This type of understanding is reflected in the activation of mirror neurons. They were discovered in the early 1990s and provide us with an answer to the question of how and why the recognition of the actions and even intentions of other individuals relies primarily on our own behavioral repertoire. For any action, from elementary acts such as grasping to more complex ones that require special skills, such as performing a sonata on the piano or certain dance steps, mirror neurons allow our brain to establish a correspondence between the action we observe and the action. which we can do, and thereby determine their meaning. Without such a mirroring mechanism, we would have a sensory representation, a “visual” description of the behavior of others, but we would not know what they are actually doing.
From this it follows that the system of mirror neurons, apparently, is absolutely necessary for the emergence of those forms of joint, or shared with others, experience, thanks to which each of us is able to act not only as an individual, but also as a member of society. Various forms of imitation, both simple and complex, as well as learning, verbal and gestural communication, involve the activation of certain systems of mirror neurons. In addition, a group of brain regions endowed with mirror properties was also a correlate of our ability to understand the emotional reactions of other people. We share our emotions with the people around us as directly as we do our actions: the perception of pain, grief, or disgust experienced by another person leads to the activation of the same areas of the cerebral cortex that are activated.
All this shows how strong and durable the bonds that bind us to others - or, in other words, how wrong it would be to try to comprehend the Self without the We. As Peter Brook reminded us, actors on stage must break through all language and cultural barriers, otherwise they will not be able to share their actions and experiences with the audience. The study of mirror neurons, apparently, for the first time in history, provides us with a unified experimental and theoretical basis within which it will be possible to solve the riddle of this involvement, created by the theater and, in essence, underlying our everyday experience.
