What are mirror neurons? Riddles and clues of mirror neurons

You are walking through the park and see a frisbee flying into the face of a random passer-by. Automatically you sympathize with him. If you watch a race and cheer for a particular runner, your heart begins to beat faster, especially when he is close to the finish line. Watching a woman try an unfamiliar food and wrinkle her nose can make you feel an uneasy feeling in your stomach.

Over the years, these body reactions have raised questions among psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers. How does a person manage to react so quickly instinctively to the thoughts, feelings and intentions of other people?

On this moment Most scientists are confident that, from a neuroscientific point of view, this phenomenon can be explained by the work of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons- this is a type of brain cell that responds equally to the situation when we ourselves perform this or that action, and to observing how the action is performed by another person. These neurons were first discovered in the early 1990s by Italian scientists who found them in the brains of monkeys. The same neuronal firing in monkeys was observed when they themselves picked up an object and when they observed other primates taking the same object. It is worth noting that single neurons were observed in the brain of monkeys, the presence of which in the human brain has not yet been established.

Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti from the University of Parma, who discovered these neurons, reports that their presence explains how and why we can “read” the thoughts of other people and experience empathy for them. Continuing the study, scientists came to the conclusion that mirror neurons can also explain phenomena such as autism and the evolution of language.

However, research into mirror neurons in the human brain is still in its early days. So far, scientists have not been able to find single neurons in humans (unlike monkeys), but only more common system mirror neurons. The problem is that to determine the activity of single neurons in a person, you need to connect electrodes directly to the brain. IN last years All studies of mirror neurons are carried out using MRI.

In a word, although scientists have established the presence of a mirror system in the human brain, it is not yet possible to prove the existence of single mirror neurons.

All mirror neuron studies have looked at humans and monkeys performing certain actions. This is because the motor area of ​​the brain is the most studied and understood. It is in this area that it is easier for scientists to track the presence of certain types of neurons.

However, this approach was insufficient, since it did not answer the most interesting questions, for example, about how people perceive the emotions and feelings of other people.

Bruno Wicker and colleagues used fMRI to study the emotion of disgust. A study published in the journal Neuron in 2003 involved 14 adult men. Brain activity was measured in two situations: in the first case, participants were asked to smell butyric acid(having the smell of rotten oil), and in the second - watch a video in which a man wrinkles his face, expressing hostility and disgust. Scientists have found that both one's own experience and viewing the experience of another person activates a certain segment of the olfactory field in the anterior insula of the brain. Similar mirror reactions were observed in studies of brain activity during tactile contact.

Other scientists have wondered whether mirror neurons might respond not only to other people's emotions and actions, but also provide insight into the intent behind those actions.

“You can pick up the cup with the intention of taking a sip or remove it from the table. The question is whether mirror neurons can tell the difference,” says Marco Iacoboni, author of a study on mirror neurons published in the journal PLOS Biology.

In his experiment, a team of scientists used fMRI to study 23 participants who watched videos of a person picking up a cup. In the first video, a person took it from a set table, on which there were various treats for the party. This situation was supposed to hint to the participant that, most likely, the person in the video wants to drink tea. In the second video, the table was littered with candy wrappers and dirty plates, which informed the participant that the party was over and the hero of the video wanted to clear the table. In the third video, the cup was standing on an empty table. Scientists were able to establish that mirror neurons in the premotor cortex responded more strongly to actions in the context of a party than to actions outside of any context. This means that mirror neurons are important not only for understanding the actual action, but also for understanding a person's intentions.

Mirror neurons are key to understanding how humans have managed to survive and thrive in complex social world. The mechanism of these neurons is involuntary and automatic. This means that a person does not need to think about what other people are doing or feeling, he simply knows it.

With a high degree of probability, a person is “programmed” to see other people as similar to himself, and not different from himself. Basically, we perceive the people we meet, their feelings, intentions and actions, just as we perceive our own emotions and sensations.

Original article: Lea Winerman, - The mind’s mirror, Monitor on Psychology. American Psychological Association, October, 2005.

Editor: Simonov Vyacheslav Mikhailovich

Keywords: mirror neurons, neuroscience, psychology, research

Ecology of life. Science and Discovery: When Italian neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti published a note on mirror neurons in 1992, he could not have imagined how deeply this discovery would influence cognitive neuroscience in the next 20 years. It was even harder to predict that the discovery of mirror neurons would affect disciplines outside of neuroscience, namely psychology, sociology, philosophy, and even interest novelists.

When Italian neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti published a paper on mirror neurons in 1992, he could not have imagined how profoundly this discovery would impact cognitive neuroscience over the next 20 years. It was even more difficult to predict that the discovery of mirror neurons would affect disciplines outside of neuroscience, namely psychology, sociology, philosophy, and even interest novelists (1).

Since the discovery of mirror neurons, many scientists in various laboratories around the world have been conducting fruitful research in this area. Scientific hypotheses that arose at the end of the 20th century are now quite successful in explaining not only a number of phenomena in social life and complement modern knowledge about language and speech, but also determine the neurophysiological mechanisms of some diseases and open up new approaches to their treatment.

About mirror neurons and the “mirror mechanism”

"Mirror Mechanism"

The discovery of mirror neurons revolutionized psychology and neuroscience. Mirror neurons are unique cells brain that are activated when we monitor the actions of other people. These cells, like a mirror, automatically “reflect” someone else’s behavior in our head and allow us to feel what is happening as if we were performing these actions ourselves.

The mirror mechanism is a basic brain mechanism that transforms sensory representations of the behavior of others into one's own motor or visceromotor representations regarding that behavior. Based on its location in the brain, the mirror mechanism enables a range of cognitive functions, including understanding actions and emotions. In each case, it provides insight into the behavior of others, which largely depends on one's own motor or visceromotor representations (2).

It has been established that there are two types of mirror neurons: motor, or so-called action neurons, and emotional. The work of the latter helps a person to understand the emotions of other people on a subconscious level, based on data from the visual analyzer, that is, the eye. Watching someone else's facial expressions or gestures, we involuntarily begin to experience other people's emotions.

So why has the discovery of mirror neurons had such a significant impact on the “cognitive” disciplines? There are two most likely reasons.

Firstly, this discovery brought the problem of how we understand others to the forefront of neuroscience.

Secondly, By showing that mirror neurons are predominantly motor neurons, it was proposed that the motor system is involved in understanding the actions and intentions of others (1).

Currently, a fairly large body of knowledge has been accumulated about the relationship between social cognitive function and motor activity. The direct correspondence between visual actions and their motor representations is the most important functional property of the mirror neuron. The results of many studies support the so-called internal modeling as a basic concept for mirror neurons. They are thought to play an important role in social cognitive function (3).

Visual jolt

Currently, Professor G. Rizzolatti and his colleagues are working on the practical application of their discovery, including in medicine. They are based on the fact that mirror motor neurons stimulate a person to reproduce the actions of others that he observes from the outside, for example, when watching a television or video program.

In particular, it has been recorded that when watching a boxing match, fans often tense their muscles, clench their hands into a fist, and even try to reproduce a right hook. This behavior is a typical neuroeffect and underlies new technique rehabilitation after stroke, as well as other pathological conditions in which a person forgets how to perform certain movements.

If the patient's neurons are not completely damaged, but only their functioning is disrupted, then using a “visual push” (that is, demonstrating the necessary action under certain conditions), you can activate nerve cells and make them “reflect” movements, in other words, start functioning again as before. This method is called “action-observation therapy” (from the English action-observation therapy).

After injuries and accidents

This therapy was tried to restore the health of people after serious injuries., in particular, received in car accidents. It's about about situations when a victim with damaged lower limbs has to learn to walk again. Usually in such cases a painful gait, lameness, etc. persist for a long time.

Usually, rehabilitation using traditional methods takes a lot of time. However, if the patient is shown a specially created film with appropriate movements, then the necessary motor neurons are activated in his brain, which helps to significantly shorten the rehabilitation period.

After a stroke

Thanks to action-observation therapy, a significant improvement in the rehabilitation process of patients after a stroke is achieved. A recent study by researchers at the University of Southern California found that the brains of stroke patients exhibited significant motor cortical activity while observing others performing physical exercise (4).

Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers monitored the brains of 24 people (12 who had suffered strokes and the other 12 who were healthy controls) as they watched people perform physical activities with their hands that were difficult for them. “stroke” (raising a pencil, tossing a playing card, etc.).

It was found that the brain healthy person responds to visual stimuli with activity in the motor regions of the cerebral cortex, which are activated when observing an action being performed. However, in stroke patients, activity in these areas of the damaged hemisphere was stronger when observing actions that they themselves found most difficult to perform.

Thus, watching others perform physical exercise, leads to activation of the motor area of ​​the brain hemisphere damaged as a result of a stroke. This, in fact, is the goal of therapy - to help people who have suffered a stroke partially restore the mobility of their arms.

Autism

The most serious damage to mirror neurons is associated with genetic disorders. Most often this happens for autism.

Scientists from Cambridge have united various ways diagnostics that allow identifying autism in children of different ages based on the level of development of the ability to understand someone else's consciousness. This has led to the identification of a link between autism and the mirror neuron system (5).

Since the mirror mechanism of “reflecting” the actions and emotions of others is disrupted in the brains of such patients, autistic people simply cannot understand what other people are doing. They are not able to rejoice or empathize, since they simply do not experience similar emotions when looking at those who are nearby. These incomprehensible manifestations are unfamiliar to them and frighten them, so people with autism prefer to avoid contact with what frightens them.

At the same time, according to G. Rizzolatti, it is possible to restore autistic children as fully as possible if this is done at a very early age. At the most initial stages When communicating with such children, you need to show very strong emotional activity.

The mother and specialist must constantly talk with the child, as well as make tactile contact, in order to develop not only motor, but also sensory and emotional skills.

In addition, you should play with your child as often as possible. However, competitive games are not suitable. It is important to choose a game in which results/success can only be achieved through joint efforts (assembling construction sets, putting together puzzles, etc.). Only in this way can a child understand that being with someone is not scary, but on the contrary, useful (1).

In perspective

Scientists see an important area of ​​future research in assessing the sensitivity of mirror neurons to early “disturbances” of the social environment and critical periods. Clinical studies of early social interactions, such as in children who experience a severe lack of early social stimulation or who, due to genetic reasons, have deficits in social communication, may represent an interesting problem for studying the ontogeny of this mechanism and determining its functional role.

Another important question, which will be fundamental to a deeper understanding "mirror mechanism" is to elucidate its neurochemical and molecular basis (1).

It is assumed that this new information will be extremely useful not only for a better understanding of the mirror mechanism itself, but also for its practical application in the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders in which so-called social competence is compromised.

Better knowledge of the molecular and neurochemical basis of this mechanism will provide breakthroughs in the development of new treatments and interventions based on reliable experimental results.

Literature:

1. Ferrari R., Rizzolatti G. Mirror neuron research: the past and the future // Philos Trans R Soc 1. Lond B Biol Sci. 2014 Jun 5; 369 (1644): 20130169.

2. Rizzolatti G., Sinigaglia C. The mirror mechanism: a basic principle of brain function // Nat 2. Rev Neurosci. 2016 Dec;17 (12):757-765.

3. Murata A., Maeda K. What mirror neurons have been revealed: revisited // Brain Nerve. 3. 2014 Jun; 66 (6):635-46.

4. Garrison K.A., Aziz-Zadeh L., Wong S.W., Liew S.-L, Winstein C.J. Modulating the Motor 4. System by Action Observation After Stroke // Stroke. 2013 Aug; 44 (8):2247-53.

5. Kosonogov V. Mirror neurons: a brief scientific review / V. Kosonogov. - Rostov-5. on-Don, 2009. - 24 p.

The excitement about mirror neurons, of course, is no longer as strong as it was, and that is why we decided to delve into this topic calmly, without unnecessary fuss. Mirror neurons have been used to explain everything from the effects of meditation on people to complex business processes. How are things really going and is it possible to use mirror neurons for your own purposes?

What it is

We'll tell you from the very beginning. The discovery belongs to a group of Italian scientists led by Giacomo Rizzolatti. In 1993, they discovered strange brain activity in macaque monkeys (who had electrodes inserted into their heads). Some areas of the parietal, frontal and temporal regions began to do something that scientists had never seen before.

Namely: they reacted equally to the action and to observation of the same action. The monkey takes a nut, and some area becomes active. He watches the experimenter take the nut - exactly the same thing happens.

Rizzolatti called the discovered groups of neurons mirror cells, wrote an article and immediately sent it to a reputable journal, but he was told that the discovery was so-so, and they did not publish it. But the scientist was confident of success and did not back down. As a result, his discovery was published in 1996 in an equally serious journal. And oh, what started here!

The fate of discovery

The brain and consciousness in general are beyond our understanding. And when these appear significant theories, they are stubbornly drawn by the ears to any phenomena. From a layman’s point of view, mirror neurons can explain many processes, but the problem is that the existence of these neurons in humans has not been proven.

Yes, our brain is very similar to the brain of primates, and with the help of MRI and EEG (electroencephalogram) it is possible to detect the activity of those very areas in such experiments. But even these functional studies support the theory only indirectly.

Let's give a simple example: a person undergoes an ultrasound examination of the abdominal cavity and finds some kind of formation in the liver. The doctor can tell whether there is tissue or liquid in it, whether it is delimited by a capsule, name the dimensions, but he will not make an accurate diagnosis - we will only find out with a puncture (if we pinch off a piece and examine it under a microscope).

It’s the same with MRI and EEG: there is activity, but it can come from other neurons. To find out whether they are mirror images, you need to do the same thing as Professor Rizzolatti - place electrodes in the brain of a living person.

Another proof

And in 2010, American scientists did it. They placed electrodes in the cortex of the frontal and temporal lobes of people with epilepsy to identify the epileptic focus and subsequently remove it. And at the same time, they conducted experiments that would confirm or refute the presence of mirror neurons in humans.

Thus, scientists noticed the activity of the same groups of neurons both during grasping movements and grimacing, and during observation of the same actions from the side. Everyone was happy and said that yes, there are neurons.

However, the discovery was not credited to the Americans. Firstly, independent experts said, 21 people is actually not enough to make such conclusions. And secondly, they finished off, you placed the electrodes not in those areas of the cortex where mirror neurons are located in macaques, but in those that are responsible for memory. And it is suspected that the neurons behave this way because they are responding to a memory, not an action.

So we are all still waiting for evidence. After all, all the theories and experiments around mirror neurons explain many things about ourselves. And they help both in everyday behavior and in business.

Areas of use

Mirror neurons may explain language development, infant behavioral learning, and various neurological and psychiatric diseases.

Let's take a closer look at what can be used in our field.

1. Empathy

At a party, you walk up to a group of people laughing and start smiling before you even hear the next joke. Or close person tells you about his trouble. How will you feel? Ability to understand emotional condition Scientists also explain the other by mirror neurons.

When we observe a person, neurons also reflect his state - this is how we understand what he feels and actually feel the same thing.

2. Immediate understanding

A person looks at a thing, and we immediately understand his intentions. At the same time, we do not need any logical chain; we realize everything instantly. For example, during lunch someone looks at a cup, and we already know what he will do: drink the contents or wash it.

4. Crowd effect

Essentially the same imitation, but slightly different. This often happens: a completely terrible thing comes into fashion that you would never wear on yourself under any circumstances. But now it catches your eye more and more often, and you no longer treat it so categorically. And after some time you find yourself trying on UGG boots in a store.

Are sales of many market giants no longer looking so stunning? In the sense that even if a company fails (iPhone X at minus zero, hello!), people still continue to buy their products.

5. Hearing and smell

Mirror neurons respond to more than just visual stimuli. For example, a macaque unwraps a nut from a rustling package, and then hears someone doing the same. In both cases, a certain area of ​​the cerebral cortex is active. The same thing happens with our nose.

You've probably read more than one article about how unobtrusive pleasant melodies and delicious smells in shopping centers influence visitors' decisions to buy something.

American psychiatrist Alan Hirsch used an experiment to prove that certain smells can significantly increase sales: in the grocery department, this is the smell fresh cucumber, in clothing stores - mint and lavender, and in car dealerships they use entire compositions (the central place in them is occupied by the aroma of leather and cigars).

Dangerous! When mirror neurons don't work

Let's take a break. If you have a regular pencil, five minutes of free time and one other person, you can conduct a fun experiment. It was invented by Paula Niedenthal from the Emotion Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin (imagine, there is such a thing). So:

• You sit opposite each other.
• One of you holds a pencil between your teeth.
• And the second one tells some emotional story.
• Switch roles and compare results.

Analyze how you felt. Typically, couples tell the same thing about their experiences: those who listened at first could not concentrate on the story - the pencil was distracting. But even then, when they forgot about it, it was still just as difficult to understand the meaning. Why?

Emotion lab workers say it's all about the facial muscles: when they can't move, signals don't reach mirror neurons, we can't respond to other people's emotions and understand them worse.

This is confirmed by people with Moebius syndrome - congenital paralysis of the facial nerves. They note that they practically do not understand other people's emotions.

Italian scientists came to the same conclusion in 2016 after their own experiment. They found that people with Botox injections find it more difficult to distinguish between the feelings and emotions of others.

conclusions

So far, humanity does not have enough information about mirror neurons. Perhaps everything that is now written about them is explained somehow differently. Or vice versa: mirror neurons rule all our emotions and actions and generally control consciousness - who knows.

In any case, all the theories described in this article work (even if they can be explained differently). You noticed it yourself, didn’t you? We do not need to fully understand all the capabilities of our body in order to achieve success. Therefore, believe in yourself, try new things and move towards your goal - everything will work out!

Illustration by Gavin Potenza

Mirror neurons have appeared on my Facebook feed at least four times this week. It seems like scientific articles, which friends posted, they explained the effects of meditation, why some people are happier than others, the work of neuromarketing in sales and the development of children. And then I couldn’t resist and translated this article by Sharon Begley from the magazine Mindful a year ago - because I am close to the middle way approach. And when I see such an obvious imbalance in the flow of information, I want to level the situation and talk about an alternative point of view. Broaden your perspective.

In anticipation of questions, the author of the article, Sharon Begley, is a senior science correspondent for Reuters, and before that she was the science editor of the American Neesweek. In addition, she is the co-author of the book “How Emotions Rule the Brain,” which she wrote with the famous Richard Davidson, and also the author of the book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, dedicated to the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. In the United States, Begley is one of the most competent scientific commentators writing about neuroscience.

Translation © Anastasia Gosteva

In 1992, scientists at the University of Parma in Italy announced an exciting discovery: certain neurons in the premotor cortex of macaque monkeys fire in two very different situations. In the first case, this happens when the monkeys perform a certain action - for example, reaching for food; in the second case, neurons fire when macaques simply observe an experimenter performing the same action.

Up to this point, all textbooks on neuroscience had written that the same brain cells could be activated either in the first case or in the second. But never both. But the Parma discovery seemed to demonstrate that “cells in the motor system fire both when I perform an action and when I watch you perform an action,” says neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni of the University of California, Los Angeles. “Before, we had no idea that the brain was designed this way.”

In 1996, these cells received their intriguing name - “mirror neurons”, which reflected their ability to be activated in those moments when the macaque did not perform an action, but only observed it, “mirrored”. It was like the starting gun going off in the neuroscience community.

The discovery of mirror neurons “is a revolution” in our understanding of the nature of empathy and cooperation, one researcher has argued. It was mirror neurons that were “the main driving force” in the giant evolutionary leap that the ape brain took, another argued. Thanks to mirror neurons, “we have a universal conceptual framework that allows us to explain many mental abilities that have remained a mystery until now,” concluded a third. And he proposed calling these cells “neurons that created civilization.”

Other scientists have claimed that mirror neurons gave impetus to the development of language (in humans, the equivalent of the macaque premotor cortex is Broca's area, which is responsible for our speech), as well as the ability of people to guess what another person is thinking or feeling. Malfunctions in the functioning of mirror neurons have been tried to explain autism, which is characterized by a person’s inability to perceive the feelings and mental state of other people.

One scientist even tried to appeal to the action of mirror neurons to explain why only face-to-face diplomatic negotiations produce real results. “In this way, participants convey information to each other, and also gain the opportunity to deeply empathize with each other,” he argued.

The media only added fuel to the fire. Mirror neurons have been used to explain everything - selfless heroism, tears during a movie screening, as well as the fact that patients feel better when friends and relatives visit them.

And for some neuroscientists, this was too much. In 2010, I attended a dinner with representatives of the psychology department at University of California in Davis. And she innocently asked what they thought about mirror neurons. Judging by the way everyone present rolled their eyes and looked at each other, I might as well have asked their opinion on creationism.

In 2012, when the number of scientific papers on mirror neurons reached 800, Christian Jarrett of the British Psychological Society called them “the most falsely hyped topic in neuroscience.”

And recently, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, a professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, told me that “mirror neuron theory has been used to explain a lot of phenomena in cognitive psychology, but there is no real scientific evidence to support it.”

Let's try to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, do humans have mirror neurons? Given how similar the brains of humans and monkeys are, we should have them. But at the moment there is no clear evidence that they exist. The fact is that this would require conducting a rather rigorous experiment - namely, connecting electrodes to specifically selected neurons in the human cortex and making sure that they are excited both when performing an action and when observing the same action. This procedure is too dangerous and therefore ethical considerations do not allow it to be performed on healthy volunteers.

However, in 2010, Iacoboni and his colleagues tried to circumvent this problem through surgeries performed on epilepsy patients, during which such electrodes are temporarily implanted in the brain. The results revealed neurons that fired both when patients watched an action on a computer screen and when they made grasping movements or grimaced.

Unfortunately, only 21 people took part in the study, and its results were not confirmed by any independent group of researchers. In addition, likely candidates for mirror neurons were not in the same area of ​​the cortex where they are found in macaques, but in parts of the brain associated with memory. In this regard, the concern arose that the excitation of neurons at the moment of action and observation of action is not due to their “mirroring”, but simply to the fact that they are part of a neural circuit involved in the process of remembering. A 2013 review of the study said the results “never provided conclusive evidence” that humans have mirror neurons.

If we still assume that we have them, then could they be the reason that people are able to feel the emotions of other people and be capable of empathy?

Let's think logically. Iacoboni told me that perhaps the mirror circuit, which is activated both during observation and during action, must be embedded in a neural circuit that “knows” the purpose of a given action, “since actions are always associated with intentions. Mirror neurons activate meaning or intention circuits from within. And it goes deeper than cognitive understanding.”

Likewise, the circuit that is responsible for smiling, grimacing, or any other emotional expression on our face must be connected to the circuits that encode the corresponding emotion (which is why we feel a little happier when we smile). Since the mirror circuit should be activated when we see someone make a face, this should activate the circuits responsible for causing emotions when we make a face. And voila: we have a mechanism for tuning into other people's feelings.

However, skeptics point out that we do not need to perform any action in order to understand what another person is doing or feeling. I understand perfectly well what my husband does when he removes the cover of an outlet and pulls out the wires, although my motor neurons have never been activated as a result of similar actions.

“We are able to understand many actions and the purpose of those actions, even though we have never done them ourselves,” says Gernsbacher. “And there are also people who can perfectly decipher what emotion is behind a particular facial expression, although they themselves are not capable of these expressions due to brain damage or for other reasons.”

Even if we have mirror neurons, they are not a necessary condition to develop empathy or understanding how the brain works.

Eat a large number of scientific works, which promise to “provide evidence that mirror neuron dysfunction is responsible for autism,” but very few of these studies have been independently verified. An even smaller number of papers were able to pass the rigorous testing of their methodology.

For example, some studies linking autism to the functioning of mirror neurons have used technology to monitor the activity of certain areas of the brain. Activity in these areas was measured when people with autism performed actions themselves and when they copied actions seen in the picture. Moreover, during image imitation, the part of the brain where mirror neurons should hypothetically be located was less active in autistic people than in autistic people. ordinary people from the control group.

But Gernsbacher and other critics point out that it is not entirely clear what the connection between autism and imitation is. “There is a large body of research that shows that neither children nor adults with autism have problems understanding the intentions or actions of others, as would be expected from the hypothesis that autism is linked to defects in the functioning of mirror neurons,” says Morton Ann. “No study has been able to show that such a connection exists.”

Mirror neurons could indeed be a discovery that completely changes the scientific paradigm. The human brain tends to get excited about the different cool parts that make up it. And the idea that one of these elements offers a simple and elegant solution to many neuroscientific mysteries and explains what makes us human is particularly attractive.

But even if it turns out that we don’t have those fancy mirror neurons, that won’t make us any less capable of empathy. We just still won't have an easy neurological explanation for how empathy works.

In the future, social scientists will have a lot of fun studying how mirror neurons became part of popular culture, despite the skepticism of neuroscientists. This is a perfect example of how scientific idea captures the minds, and now it is impossible to put it back into Pandora's box.

There's a lot of talk about mirror neurons. “Mirror neurons are neurons in the brain that fire both when performing a certain action and when observing another creature perform this action. Such neurons have been reliably discovered in primates, and their presence is confirmed in humans and some birds” (Wikipedia). The theory of mirror neurons as a way to understand the actions and emotions of other people has been reasonably criticized for its overly global conclusions. Proponents of the theory consider mirror neurons to be the creators of our civilization and the cause of autism (in case of problems in such neurons). The facts are that little is known about these neurons specifically in humans, and not monkeys, and a lot of research is required before moving on to generalizations. After all, mirror neurons are only a small part of the system for understanding the world around us. After all, this is incredible difficult task, and our brain can hardly do this with the help of a small group of neurons located in the motor regions of the brain. And while they are breaking spears around mirror neurons, let’s look at the situation from a different angle.

First, the theory states that when we kick a ball, for example, our motor neurons are activated in order to perform such an action. When we ourselves are not moving, but look at a person kicking a ball, the same neurons are activated, although in to a lesser extent. What's more interesting is that when we just imagining When you yourself or someone else kicks the ball, the same thing happens in the brain.

Studies with professional athletes have proven that visualizing (imagining) motor movements really works. Yes, you can imagine yourself taking a penalty kick or taking the high jump from the comfort of your chair, and your skills in these actions will improve measurably in the actual performance. Several rules have also emerged: you must present necessary so that the movements are successful. If you imagine failures, then real results will only get worse. Another rule: visualization should must be combined with practice.

You can try a simple experiment: imagine yourself writing a sentence with your non-dominant hand. The speed at which you can do this in your imagination will be just as slow, and your actions will be just as clumsy, as in reality! If you set yourself the goal of learning to write with this hand, then as you learn, your actions will become more successful and easier, both on paper and in the imagination. This works precisely because when we visualize, we use the same parts of the brain that are involved in actually performing physical actions.

Such an incredible ability cannot remain unclaimed by the brain: it is too good. Therefore, according to some studies, our dreams appear to be simulations of behavior in unclear situations. This dramatization seems real to us in a dream, and we can safely practice in search of the correct behavior and emotional attitude towards it. At least half of all our dreams are simulations, and 20% of dreams are re-enactments of threatening events, where our brain considers various options exit from them. Some dreams, which we all know very well, end in failure, instilling fear and horror in us - this is an unsuccessful option, which, nevertheless, gives us an understanding of something important.

The quality of a mental simulation of a situation depends on experience. Thus, professional hockey players studied in one study differed significantly in simulating situations related to hockey from people who only knew about it by hearsay. Is it possible to become a good hockey player just by watching the actions of hockey players on TV or at the stadium? There is no evidence today that this approach is effective. But the quality of the simulation will increase, and as it turns out, it even depends from one interaction experience, and this experience may be trivial.

So, in one study, people first matched pictures with words. They could see words, for example: mop, brush, bottle, and corresponding pictures. What people didn't know was that some objects were shown to them in different orientations—for example, a toothbrush was shown horizontally to some, and vertically to others. After this, people were distracted for 20 minutes and then sentences were shown on the monitor, one word at a time, and participants had to press a button to move on to the next word. They were required to decide as quickly as possible whether they saw a meaningful proposal.

Imagine: twenty minutes ago a person saw for a second a picture of a toothbrush in an upright position, and then receives a sentence: Aunt Rose finally found a toothbrush on the bathroom floor.

We begin a mental simulation of a situation on the fly, as we read or listen to a sentence. When a person comes to the words “on the floor”, his brain tells him that if so, then the brush should lie horizontally. But twenty minutes ago he saw it vertical, and an inconsistency of images arises in his brain, and it takes additional time to change the imaginary picture! Everyone who received such incongruent pictures showed a delay in reaction time.

This suggests that even fleeting experience changes the process of imagination and influences understanding. Therefore, if a person's experience in some area takes tens of thousands of hours, then his imagination of a familiar situation will be significantly different from the imagination of a beginner. This also suggests that to understand the world we constantly imagine it in our brains - every object we see, sound we hear and words we read.

The simulation literally behaves the same way as reality. Try, while walking, to imagine that you are riding a bicycle, pedaling. You can't do both well at the same time. Again, because one real action and another imagined one begin to compete for the same brain region.

But we can go and sing, and in addition throw a ball with a tennis racket. That is why scientists for a long time could not understand why talking on the phone, even over a speakerphone, has such a strong impact on the quality of driving. It would seem that driving requires mainly movements of the arms and legs, and vision, and conversation - movements of the mouth and hearing. But the solution turned out to be precisely this: what exactly are we talking about by phone. When the conversation concerns spatial or visual aspects, driving deteriorates. You are asked over the phone to decide what to do with the door at the dacha, and in order to do this, your brain must imagine a dacha, a rickety door, and will begin to occupy the resources of precisely those regions that are involved in driving.

People who have impaired motor functions are found to be less able to understand the corresponding movements of other people. For example, some patients with Parkinson's syndrome have a worse understanding of verbs, and some patients with dementia have a worse understanding of nouns that correspond to their problems. Others cannot visually judge the weight of boxes that a person lifts. This occurs due to the physical limitation of imagining such actions - after all, in order to understand this, you need to activate a region in the brain, and it is affected. This is useful knowledge because there is a hypothesis that perhaps by teaching words the condition of these patients can be improved!

Understanding this, it is relatively easy to detect socially dangerous pathologies. So, when showing pictures depicting negative emotions In people, and in particular in children, it is possible, using biometric data, to understand whether the viewer feels the same emotions, in other words, whether he experiences empathy. Some people, who might be called sociopaths, have this ability physically limited—their brains cannot activate the appropriate brain regions to understand other people's experiences.

When we develop our imagination by remembering past events (and we are reconstructing them every time) or by reading art books, we begin better understand the world around us. So, the world of Fenimore Cooper activates the visual system to see how the Indian froze and merged with the tree, noticing the deer, the auditory system to hear how the string of his bow barely creaks, the olfactory system to smell the mushroom smell autumn forest. The motor cortex also activates, and the muscles tense, as if you were holding a bow in your hands with the string drawn. Therefore reading is good fiction- a very useful activity for many reasons, including for your future.

Our imagination is a powerful ability. Every second we try to understand the world around us, and when we fail, it is because we have difficulty imagining it. This is amazing, because we can even imagine apparently non-existent objects: unicorns, vegetarian zombies or rosy-cheeked cupids.

Perhaps we can do this because we read fascinating (and therefore emotionally charged) books about it, or watched films. Stephen King, for example, knows how to captivate us and enrich our imagination with some creepy horror that we know does not exist, but which after reading it we can easily imagine (and fear).

Another approach is to train. It’s worth trying the “royal” method of improving imagination:

«- Can't be! - Alice exclaimed. - I can’t believe this!

- Can not? - repeated the Queen with pity. “Try again: take a deep breath and close your eyes.”

Alice laughed.
- This won't help! - she said. - You cannot believe in the impossible!

“You just don’t have enough experience,” the Queen remarked. “When I was your age, I devoted half an hour to this every day!” On some days, I managed to believe in a dozen impossibilities before breakfast!” (Leis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland).

In addition to understanding the present, our imagination prepares us for the future, where we will spend the rest of our lives. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert noted (Gilbert, 2006): “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in real world, and this ability gives us the ability to think about the future. As one philosopher said, human the brain is a machine of anticipation, and the creation of the future is the most important work in which it is engaged».

Bergen, B. K. (2012). Louder than words: the new science of how the mind makes meaning. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Bosbach, S., Cole, J., Prinz, W., & Knoblich, G. (2005). Inferring another’s expectation from action: the role of peripheral sensation. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1295-1297.

Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Malcolm-Smith, S., Koopowitz, S., Pantelis, E., & Solms, M. (2012). Approach/avoidance in dreams. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(1), 408-412.

Wassenburg, S. I., & Zwaan, R. A. (2010). Readers routinely represent implied experience object rotation: The role of visual. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 1665–1670.

Weinberg, R. (2008). Does imagery work? Effects on performance and mental skills. Journal of Imagery. Research in Sport and Physical Activity, 3(1), 1–21.

Woolfolk, R. L., Parrish, M. W., & Murphy, S. M. (1985). The effects of positive and negative imagery on motor skill performance. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 9, 335–341.