Mirror Neurons

I stumbled on to Mirror Neurons after having a deep discussion at lunch. Durring our discussion while I was eating grilled Salmon, I said ’’I can never feel for someone else, unless I imagine that person to be me.’’

My friend who had ordered french fries disagreed and said that it was possible to feel for others wihtout imagining ourselves to be them.

At night I did a search on the internet on the ’’Science of Empathy.’’ I found many interesting things including the fact that mice experience empathy. I also found this amazing 14 minute documentary on Mirror Neurons.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html

We actually have something in our brain called Mirror Neurons which allow us to feel what others are feeling. We humans are powerful natural empathizers, something that allowed us to evolve faster than other animals, because the brain creates feelings of empathy through these mirror neurons.

For example for bears to survive the cold winter many of them would have to die and only the furry ones would eventually evolve to survive the winters over millions of years. But a human watching another human kill a bear and wear the bear skin, can use feelings of empathy to learn that wearing bear skin will lead to warmth. This nice empathizing human can then go and kill another bear, tear out the skin, and create a warm coat for herself while eating the meat for protein. So we humans skipped millions of years of evolution and made great progress.


The brain does not distinguish between doing something yourself and watching someone else do that same thing. We become the other person and this is how we feel for them. Acts of religon and racism and nationalism act in an opposite manner by creating a unnatural distance between humans and causing them to do evil things to each other.

Check it out:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html

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