Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy And Humanity

How wishful thinking and little evidence can lead to controversial theories, like the one about mirror neurons.

In the 1990s, Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues were researching brain activity in Macaque monkeys. What they found — by accident — is that certain neurons were activated when Rizzolatti’s colleague Leonardo Fogassi reached out to get some raisins for the monkeys. The same neurons were activated when the monkeys themselves reached out for raisins. Hence the name that was given to these types of neurons — mirror neurons.

There has been much controversy surrounding these mirror neurons from the beginning. In 2000, San Diego neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran took the discussion to a whole new level when he predicted that mirror neurons would do for psychology what DNA did for biology — namely provide numerous explanations for previously totally mysterious behavior. Ramachandran carried things even further when he claimed in 2011 that mirror neurons underlie empathy, accelerated the evolution of the brain, and even prompted the great leap forward in human culture that happened around 60,000 years ago, when we started to use more tools and create more sophisticated art. Others, like neuroscience author Rita Carter, have introduced the idea that some people have “broken mirror neurons”, like autistic people, who often lack empathy.

In reality, while all these hypotheses sound pretty awesome, not much of their working is backed up by research or research outcomes. Much of the research has been done with monkeys, which makes the idea that mirror neurons make us “more human” a bit ridiculous in itself. On top of that, the research shows that there are apparently many different types of mirror neurons. Some respond to seeing live movement, others also to movement on video, yet others to sound, or touch. Also, sometimes it seems not to be individual neurons at work, but rather a whole system that mirrors what is observed — for instance when you see someone in pain, then you (probably) feel the pain too, and not just with a few mirror neurons.

The idea that autistic people have a broken mirror system was itself broken down in 2011 when Morton Ann Gernsbacher concluded…