mirror neurons: possible connection to empathy??

A corresponded send me a link to an interesting bit of information, which I would like to pass on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_cells

A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal performs an action and when the animal observes the same action performed by another (especially conspecific) animal. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself performing the action. These neurons have been observed in primates, including humans, and in some birds. In humans, they have been found in Broca's area and the inferior parietal cortex of the brain. Some scientists consider mirror neurons one of the most important findings of neuroscience in the last decade.
[..]
It is not normally possible to study single neurons in the human brain, so scientists can not be certain that humans have mirror neurons. However, the results of brain imaging experiments have shown that the human inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal cortex is active when the person performs an action and also when the person sees another individual performing an action. Therefore, these brain regions are likely to contain mirror neurons and have been defined as the human mirror neuron system. [..]

In the monkey, mirror neurons are found in the inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule. These neurons are active when the monkeys perform certain tasks, but they also fire when the monkeys watch someone else perform the same specific task. Researchers using fMRI, TMS, and EEG have found evidence of a similar system (matching observations with actions), in the human brain.[..]

Mirror neurons certainly have the potential to provide a mechanism for action understanding, imitation learning, and the simulation of other people's behaviour.[..]

Defects in mirror neurons are linked to people with autism.

Click to expand...

another quote form an essay on the subject:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html

Rizzolatti's discovery can help us solve this age-old puzzle. He recorded from the ventral premotor area of the frontal lobes of monkeys and found that certain cells will fire when a monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, grasping, picking up and putting a peanut in the mouth etc. different neurons fire in response to different actions. One might be tempted to think that these are motor "command" neurons, making muscles do certain things; however, the astonishing truth is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action, e.g. tasting a peanut! With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: "mind reading" empathy, imitation learning, and even the evolution of language. Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds."

Click to expand...

Sounds like these mirror neurons could be a possible mechanism underlying empathy and altruistic behavior. The mirror neuron systems described in monkeys appear to pertain to gross an fine motor skills. Humans may have more developed and flexible mirroring systems, better equipped to evaluate visual and auditory symbols. Our culture and learning is based on imitation. In early development, gross motor skills imitation is the easiest kind, and comes first, followed by fine motor skills and language. One can imagine same type of pathways that help people learn the meaning of complex emotions and how they are expressed.

Perhaps, in brains of psychopaths they malfunction because of a genetic defect or, in frontal characteropathy, damage to frontal zones of the brain? The link to autism is also IMO significant.

Here is another quote that sums up my own recent thoughts on altruism:

It is often said that man is selfish by nature. Even when humans sometimes demonstrate altruistic behavior, e.g., help another without obvious gain for the self, it is done with the expectation that help will be reciprocated, or so says the game theory. Yet, the understanding of how mirror neurons work demonstrates that empathy and conscience are very natural. If someone has troubles, you also feel bad, and if someone is happy, you feel happy too. When a baby cries, his mother feels his crying as his own; and when mother is happy and content, so is the baby -- this is very important, especially in the first few months of life. Such behavior is natural for us, we are really not THAT selfish.

Click to expand...

It all fits, as a piece of a puzzle, unless I am missing some details. Thoughts, anyone??

Interesting! From reading these snippets i got that mirror neutrons are responsible for developing of fine motor skills
ensuring better adaptation , and are about imitation of behavioral patterns of sussessful amimals (like 100-th monkey case) and have very little, if any, to do with empathy and altruism at level of individual. If some fine motor movements ensure survival and proliferation of the group, they get fixed in a given population. This is my first impression, get to do a homework!

Yes, mirror neuron systems in monkeys pertain to motor skills, but humans have more complicated and flexible neuron pathways, which allow us to develop culture and language, among other things.

The jury is still out, but it appears that the discovery of mirror neurons has brought about a shift in paradigm; the number of grants being awarded to related porjects is growing exponentially, and I think we are in for some exiting developments soon.


http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050427_mind_readers.html

Scientists Say Everyone Can Read Minds
By Ker Than
Special to LiveScience
posted: 27 April 2005
07:01 am ET


Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science.

Some scientists now believe they may have finally discovered its root. We're all essentially mind readers, they say.

The idea has been slow to gain acceptance, but evidence is mounting.

Mirror neurons

In 1996, three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a macaque monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning movements. The cluster of cells fired not only when the monkey performed an action, but likewise when the monkey saw the same action performed by someone else. The cells responded the same way whether the monkey reached out to grasp a peanut, or merely watched in envy as another monkey or a human did.

Because the cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, the neuroscientists named them "mirror neurons."

Later experiments confirmed the existence of mirror neurons in humans and revealed another surprise. In addition to mirroring actions, the cells reflected sensations and emotions.

"Mirror neurons suggest that we pretend to be in another person's mental shoes," says Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. "In fact, with mirror neurons we do not have to pretend, we practically are in another person's mind."

Since their discovery, mirror neurons have been implicated in a broad range of phenomena, including certain mental disorders. Mirror neurons may help cognitive scientists explain how children develop a theory of mind (ToM), which is a child's understanding that others have minds similar to their own. Doing so may help shed light on autism, in which this type of understanding is often missing.

Theory theory

Over the years, cognitive scientists have come up with a number of theories to explain how ToM develops. The "theory theory" and "simulation theory" are currently two of the most popular.

Theory theory describes children as budding social scientists. The idea is that children collect evidence -- in the form of gestures and expressions -- and use their everyday understanding of people to develop theories that explain and predict the mental state of people they come in contact with.

Vittorio Gallese, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma in Italy and one of original discovers of mirror neurons, has another name for this theory: he calls it the "Vulcan Approach," in honor of the Star Trek protagonist Spock, who belonged to an alien race called the Vulcans who suppressed their emotions in favor of logic. Spock was often unable to understand the emotions that underlie human behavior.

Gallese himself prefers simulation theory over this Vulcan approach.

Natural mind readers

Simulation theory states that we are natural mind readers. We place ourselves in another person's "mental shoes," and use our own mind as a model for theirs.

Gallese contends that when we interact with someone, we do more than just observe the other person's behavior. He believes we create internal representations of their actions, sensations and emotions within ourselves, as if we are the ones that are moving, sensing and feeling.

Many scientists believe that mirror neurons embody the predictions of simulation theory. "We share with others not only the way they normally act or subjectively experience emotions and sensations, but also the neural circuits enabling those same actions, emotions and sensations: the mirror neuron systems," Gallese told LiveScience.

Gallese points out, however, that the two theories are not mutually exclusive. If the mirror neuron system is defective or damaged, and our ability to empathize is lost, the observe-and-guess method of theory theory may be the only option left. Some scientists suspect this is what happens in autistic people, whose mental disorder prevents them from understanding the intentions and motives of others.

Tests underway

The idea is that the mirror neuron systems of autistic individuals are somehow impaired or deficient, and that the resulting "mind-blindness" prevents them from simulating the experiences of others. For autistic individuals, experience is more observed than lived, and the emotional undercurrents that govern so much of our human behavior are inaccessible. They guess the mental states of others through explicit theorizing, but the end result is a list -- mechanical and impersonal -- of actions, gestures and expressions void of motive, intent, or emotion.
Uplink Your Views

Several labs are now testing the hypothesis that autistic individuals have a mirror neuron deficit and cannot simulate the mental states of others.

One recent experiment by Hugo Theoret and colleagues at the University of Montreal showed that mirror neurons normally active during the observation of hand movements in non-autistic individuals are silent in those who have autism.

"You either simulate with mirror neurons, or the mental states of others are completely precluded to you," said Iacoboni.

Well, here we are 3 years later and it's hard to tell if we know any more than before. Many articles on 'mirror neurons' have been published in connection with various aspects of human psychology, but some articles are claiming the studies are too flawed to prove anything.

The last article quoted below, is a blog. The comments below it are a "point-counterpoint" discussion of the so-called evidences of each side.


PRO:

MIRROR NEURONS AND THE BRAIN IN THE VAT [1.10.06]
by V.S. Ramachandran
_http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran06_index.html

MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution
By V.S. Ramachandran
_http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html


CON:

[quote author=article:Is mirror neuron activity just a mirage?]
Is mirror neuron activity just a mirage?
05 November 2008 by David Robson
_http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15133-is-mirror-neuron-activity-just-a-mirage.html

They've been used to explain autism, empathy and why porn turns us on. Now some of the past findings that mirror neurons have been said to explain have been called into question by new research which suggests that these past investigations have not looked closely enough.
[...]
In humans, mirror neurons can't be observed directly, so most studies have instead looked for them by taking fMRI scans of subjects performing and observing various activities, and then finding the regions of the brain that light up in both situations. Now Ilan Dinstein from New York University has cast doubt on these studies. He claims that they haven't examined these regions in fine enough detail: the neurons responsible for the increased activity when observing may be different from those that are active when performing, he says. Assigning them a role in autism and morality is premature, he concludes.
[...]
Marco Iacoboni from the University of California, Los Angeles, who had previously reported evidence for mirror neurons in the human brain, is not convinced by the research. He points out that the method Dinstein used to analyse the brain activity could only correctly identify the gestures 70-80% of the time, even when analysing the visual or motor cortices alone - so it is not surprising that it failed to notice the more subtle changes within the aiPS.[/quote]



[quote author=Article:Role of mirror neurons may need a rethink]
_http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17192-role-of-mirror-neurons-may-need-a-rethink.html

Role of mirror neurons may need a rethink
26 May 2009 by Priya Shetty

Doubt is being cast on the true role of brain neurons that are said to explain empathy, autism and even morality.

Mirror neurons fire both when we perform an action and when we see someone else doing it. The theory is that by simulating action even when watching an act, the neurons allow us to recognise and understand other people's actions and intentions.

However, Alfonso Caramazza at Harvard University and colleagues say their research suggests this theory is flawed.

Neurons that encounter repeated stimulus reduce their successive response, a process called adaptation. If mirror neurons existed in the activated part of the brain, reasoned Caramazza, adaptation should be triggered by both observation and performance.
Theory 'overturned'

To test the theory, his team asked 12 volunteers to watch videos of hand gestures and, when instructed, to mimic the action. However, fMRI scans of the participants' brains showed that the neurons only adapted when gestures were observed then enacted, but not the other way around.

Caramazza says the finding overturns the core theory of mirror neurons that activation is a precursor to recognition and understanding of an action. If after executing an act, "you need to activate the same neurons to recognise the act, then those neurons should have adapted," he says.

Caramazza's results support similar findings by Ilan Dinstein at New York University and his team in 2007.

However, mirror neuron researcher Marco Iacoboni, at the University of California, Los Angeles, thinks the study's basic assumption is flawed. "There is no evidence that mirror neurons adapt," he says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academics of Science (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0902262106)[/quote]


[quote author=Article:All smoke and mirror neurons?:]
_http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/05/all_smoke_and_mirror.html

All smoke and mirror neurons?:
May 27, 2009

New Scientist has a tantalising snippet reporting on a shortly to be released and potentially important new study challenging the idea of 'mirror neurons'.

Mirror neurons fire both when we perform an action and when we see someone else doing it. The theory is that by simulating action even when watching an act, the neurons allow us to recognise and understand other people's actions and intentions...

However, Alfonso Caramazza at Harvard University and colleagues say their research suggests this theory is flawed.

Neurons that encounter repeated stimulus reduce their successive response, a process called adaptation. If mirror neurons existed in the activated part of the brain, reasoned Caramazza, adaptation should be triggered by both observation and performance.[/quote]

Recently, while doing some research in an area unrelated to this topic, I came across some references to mirror neurons and the insula that reminded me of this thread. I thought I'd post what is in the text of the book, along with it's references in case anyone was interested and able to check out any of the references for further data that supports this particular topic.


From the book: "The Origins of War in Child Abuse" by Lloyd deMause, chpts. 3, 5 & 6

View complete chapters FREE from The Origins of War in Child Abuse by Lloyd deMause here:
_http://www.psychohistory.com/


[quote author=Lloyd deMause]
...
Finally, one further important area of the brain becomes damaged during early stress: the insula, a deep area of the cortex that contains most of the “mirror neurons” that make people capable of empathy of the emotional states of others.97
...
It is the cutting off of access especially to the right insula that occurs when mass murderers switch into their violent alters that allows them to kill myriad numbers of strangers without guilt. And it is the cutting off of the empathic mirror neurons of the right insula that allows SS men to gather together French women and children, “hug them with tenderness” and treat them “with utmost kindness,” and then switch into their violent alters, put them in a church and set them afire and burn them to death.98
...
Indeed, the turning off of the empathic insula is responsible for all in-group/out-group splitting when people enter their violent alters in wars. Without this turning off of empathy in the war trance, mass violence is impossible. But when Hutu and Tutsi who have been friends living next to each other and intermarrying for decades switch into a war trance for internal emotional reasons and cut off the empathic mirror neurons in their right insula, they suddenly find themselves able to chop off their neighbors’ heads and arms without guilt.
...
Neuropsychiatrists have examined abused and neglected children with brain scans, and shown the damage done that affects their need for violence later on. Bruce Perry has published a huge number of studies showing abnormal brain development following neglect and abuse in little children, including significantly smaller brains, decreased activity in their prefrontal cortex, hippocampal damage and amygdaloid overexcitation that produces “electrical storms” similar to those experienced by patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, seizures that cause hallucinations and violent behavior.99[/quote]


97 “Humanity? Maybe It’s in the Wiring.” The New York Times, December 9, 2003, p. F1; Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt, 2003, p. 117; Marco Iacoboni, “Understanding Others: Imitation, Language, Empathy.” In Susan Hurley and Nick Chater, Eds., Perspectives on Imitation: From Mirror Neurons to Memes. Vol. I. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

98 Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Realism as Sickness: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1987, p. 58.

99 Bruce D. Perry, “Applying Principles of Neurodevelopment to Clinical Work with Maltreated and Traumatized Children.” In Nancy Boyd Webb, Ed., Traumatized Youth in Child Welfare. New York: Guilford Press, 2006, p. 93; John Read, Bruce Perry et al, “The Contribution of Early Traumatic Events to Schizophrenia…” Psychiatry 64(2001): 319-344.




[quote author=Lloyd deMause]
...
The fission process produces violence whenever groups switch into their dominating and subservient alters, even when there is no rational justification for enmity. This is the finding of the famous experiment of Philip Zimbardo, who randomly assigned college-age men to roles as prisoners or guards in the basement of a university building.
The guards quickly developed tyrannical and abusive strategies for controlling their prisoners, forgetting that it was an experiment. They obviously switched into their violent early alters, turned off their empathy mirror neurons in their insulas and anterior cingulates and acted out their childhood traumas, just as warriors and terrorists do.52
...
The same switching can be seen in the much-cited experiment of Stanley Milgram, where volunteers followed “university experimenters” who inflicted seemingly harmful damage upon victims when asked to do so. The only time the experimenters refused to obey was when the university arranged an acting out of a group rebellion, breaking the alter-switching fission process.53

The experiment didn’t prove “obedience” as is usually claimed; if they had asked them to reach into their pockets and give others money rather than shocks, they would not have “obeyed.” Inner alters are always harmful, never beneficent.[/quote]


52 Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect; Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House, 2007.

53 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, pp. 108-109.



[quote author=Lloyd deMause]
...
The alternate self of the warrior draws upon the same neurobiological states of mind as pre-psychotic and autistic children access, both conditions resulting from early amygdalan, prefrontal cortex and insula damage.118[/quote]


118 Kevin Pephrey et al, “Neuroanatomical Subsrates of Social Cognition Dysfunction in Autism.” Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 10(2005): 259-271; David Dobbs, “A Revealing Reflection.” Scientific American Mind April/May 2006, p. 26.


Primary reference:
"The Origins of War in Child Abuse" by Lloyd deMause, chpts. 3, 5 & 6


In addition to the above, there were related references in the video documentary "I, Psychopath" at _http://blip.tv/file/2268740


From about 28:00 to 30:00:

Talking about the brain imaging they were doing with Sam and his wife, researchers spoke of "extracting signals from the part of the brain called the insula...which is very important for regulating emotion." [the insula referred to is on the right-hand side of the brain as you can see on the scanner image]

When the control subject (Sam's wife) entered the "brain gym", and with a little practice, successfully moved the gauge up and down by recalling certain types of her memories, her insula could be seen lighting up on the brain scanner image. Like most of us, the scanner showed that she (Sam's wife) can control her emotions. By contrast, Sam V showed no ability to regulate his emotions, nor a capacity to learn how. Emotionally, he's a flat-liner ("cold emotion" as psychopathy researchers call it).

Reading "The Prehistory of the Mind" gives a good background for the way the architecture of the brain is set up to house the consciousness and act as an interface between it and the material world. Of course, the author intends it to be an explanation of consciousness, but for a variety of reasons, it falls far short of that. Mirror Neurons are certainly part of this architecture but not the explanation for empathy - merely the vehicle for bodily empathy.

Laura said:

Mirror Neurons are certainly part of this architecture but not the explanation for empathy - merely the vehicle for bodily empathy.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that distinction. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, but at least it opens up avenues for further exploration! :)