Empathy and Mirror Neurons: Or, Monkey See, Monkey Yawn; Baby See, Baby Dance

Two videos went “viral” among my Facebook friends this week. I share them with you here because who living in these rancorous times couldn’t use a little sweet-natured humor.

More germane to this blog’s brain-based focus, however, I was struck by how each video demonstrated qualities of empathy. Yes, I know. Recently, some politicians have publicly scorned empathy – perhaps because they mistakenly equate it with weakness. Yet, as a third video explains, leading neuroscientists say that our society depends on empathy. In other words, the smart money is on nourishing empathy, not castigating it.

First, consider the dancing baby. Unable to stand without support and obviously unschooled in “isolation” moves (moving head side to side), that baby Beyonce wannabee still gets down.

I’m no neuroscientist, but I have read about mirror neurons, most recently in Marco Iacoboni’s book Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. The way I see it, this baby possesses an extraordinary ability to “mirror” these dancers.

A leading neuroscientist, Iacoboni is part of the Italian scientific team that discovered mirror neurons in the brain, showing that empathy is brain-based. That is, humans are hardwired to share someone else’s feelings. From the book’s product description: “From imitation to morality, from political affiliations to consumer choices, mirror neurons are relevant to myriad aspects of social cognition.” This landmark book explains our remarkable ability to get inside another person’s head in order to know what he or she is thinking and feeling even if we’ve never experienced those thoughts and feelings ourselves. That last part is critical; we might commiserate with people who feel the same way we do, but that’s not empathy. (I’ll leave the experts to describe what that is exactly. Projection perhaps, or identification?)

It’s important to note that while empathy is a universal human quality, it is is not equally distributed among individuals. Some of us are hardwired to be more empathic than others. Most notably, persons on the autistic spectrum experience a lower-than-average sense of empathy. But, in fact, you could say empathy itself is a spectrum condition.

Next, consider the laughing babies, below. These quadruplets chortle and even belly-laugh in unison, triggered by Daddy’s funny noises. My husband’s wry quip aside (“looks like Village of the Damned”), most people report finding this quartet’s laughter infectious. Are these plentiful mirror neurons at play, connecting these babies with each other and their parents — and even we viewers?

Finally, consider another empathic contagion called yawning, as explained in this video accompanying a recent report from The Wall Street Journal’s Science Journal columnist Robert Lee Hotz, on empathy in primates and other animals (“Tracing the Origins of Human Empathy”).

Hotz writes about the work of renowned primatologist Frans de Waal. If you’re thinking that humans are more empathic (or humane) than animals, de Waal says think again. He cites recent studies that “challenge the primacy of human logic and put animals on a closer behavioral footing with humans.”

Columnist Hotz continues: “Based on the studies of mammals, from primates to mice, de Waal proposes that empathy is an instinctual behavior exhibited by both lab rats and elephants. But de Waal’s aim isn’t merely to show that apes are transactional creatures with a basic understanding of reciprocity—but to reveal that the idea that humans are naturally calculating, competitive and violent is grounded in a falsehood willfully and selfishly perpetuated. Throughout the book, de Waal illustrates how behaving more like our wild mammalian cousins may just save humanity. His contention, colored by philosophical musings and fascinating anecdotes of observed emotional connections between animals, argues persuasively that humans are not greedy or belligerent because animals are; such traits are far from organic or inevitable but patently manmade.”

Tagsdancing babies, empathy, empathy in primates, Frans de Waal, human empathy, marco iacoboni, mirror neurons, Robert Lee Hotz