Mirror Neurons: The Social Brain

Have you ever wondered why yawning is contagious? Or why spending time with some people leaves you feeling energised and spending time with others leaves you feeling drained? The answer to these questions and many more lie in some fascinating brain cells called mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons were discovered by accident in an Italian laboratory where they were investigating monkeys. They had a sensor implanted in part of the monkey’s brain which was involved in him lifting his hand to his mouth. This meant that every time the monkey performed this action (ie. when eating a peanut) a computer would register the brain activity and a light would come on. This was all running smoothly when (as legend has it) one of the research assistants entered the lab eating an ice-cream and suddenly the computer started giving strange results. Amazingly, they discovered that every time the researcher lifted his hand to his mouth to lick the ice-cream the monkeys brain would activate in exactly the same way that it would if the monkey had done the same action. As luck would have it the researchers had implanted the sensor in what they went on to call a mirror neuron. Since then there has been a lot more research into these mirror neurons and they’ve shed a lot of light on questions that have puzzled brain scientists for a long time.

In essence a mirror neuron is a social neuron. As the monkey experiment shows these neurons activate whenever you observe someone doing something- this means that merely observing an action (a smile, a yawn etc.) allows you to neurologically ‘experience’ it on some level.

This is hugely important for us because it underlies a lot of our social behaviour such as:

- Empathy. Because our mirror neurons activate in response to others facial expressions and posture we can experience something of what another person is feeling- we can literally share someone’s pain, anger or joy thanks to this system.

- Learning. Lots of our learning as children probably occurs through our mirror neurons as we watch what others do. This input ‘exercises’ the mirror neuron networks that are involved in our own actions.

- Communication. Because a person’s body language and gesturing directly stimulates our mirror neuron system we are (usually) capable of understanding the highly complex meanings and intentions behind their communication.

- And it explains the odd quirk of yawning when you see someone else yawn.

There is a huge amount we don’t know about mirror neurons but it’s likely that they may have an important role in stroke rehabilitation, and possibly in future interventions for autism.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

1. Isn’t it amazing to think that you can directly stimulate the ‘smiling’ circuitry of someone’s brain just by smiling at them? That they will subconsciously ‘experience’ that smile in their own neurology. Go smile at someone!

2. And for the philosophers out there. If parts of my brain are directly and subconsciously activated by you and parts of your brain are directly and subconsciously activated by me – then suddenly the boundaries between my ‘self’ and your ‘self’ get a little bit blurrier. On a neurological level we’re all a lot more connected than we think.