From Actions to Empathy and Morality – A Neural Perspective

1. From Actions to Empathy and Morality – A Neural Perspective .

2. IstvanMolnar-Szakacs • Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA • Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA • TennenbaumCenter for the Biology of Creativity, UCLA • Research into • Neural basis of Nonverbal communication • Mirror neurons and the social brain, music, autism, and understanding intentions of others • Neural basis of Self representation & creativity

3. The Mirror Neuron System (MNS) • Discovery published in 1992 when found macaque monkeys • Subset of Neurons activates both while observing and while performing: • Actions such as grasping • Emotions such as sadness • Watching someone receive painful events such as shocks • “Thus, our capacity for empathy – the ability to share another’s emotions and feelings – is based in a simple ‘mirroring’ mechanism implemented by the human MNS that allows us to use the same neural resources to represent states of the self and others in an overlapping way.” • http://video.pbs.org/video/1615173073/

4. Section 1: Introduction • “The aim of the current paper is to review and summarize recent research on the human MNS, asserting that this system may provide the neural scaffold for empathy and, as a result, may have served as a biological substrate for the evolution of our sophisticated sociality and the morality that governs it.” • “Thus, our capacity for empathy – the ability to share another’s emotions and feelings – is based in a simple ‘mirroring’ mechanism implemented by the human MNS that allows us to use the same neural resources to represent states of the self and others in an overlapping way.”

5. Section 1.1: The Human Mirror Neuron System • Study showed subset of motor neurons are activated while both watching and performing hand movements (Fadiga et al., 1995). • Increased Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs) in hand muscles while watching hand movements but not while observing other types of movements or objects • Same muscles that would be used to perform the task. • Performing an action produces approx. twice the neural activity as watching it. Imitation(performing while watching) produces the greatest activity. • “mirror resonance systems” • He claims that “action and perception are inseparable” both behaviorally and in neural networks.

6. Section 1.2: Intention Understanding • The human mirror neuron system “encodes the perceived intentions that give rise to overt motor actions”as shown by Iacoboniet al., 2005. • Actions imbedded within context led to more MNS activity than those without context. • Different contexts led to different levels of activation. • “These findings imply that the human MNS is sensitive to the context within which actions are embedded, and codes actions that imply different intentions differently, providing support for the hypothesis that human mirror areas mediate the understanding of the intentions behind other’s actions.”

7. Section 1.2: Intention Understanding • No difference in mirror neuron activation between those persons simply watching an action and those actively trying to deduce intentions. • “This finding showed that the representation of intentions and actions is automatic and pre-cognitive – the MNS is activated without conscious effort (Iacoboni et al., 2005). This impliesthat‘mirror neurons are a kind of ‘neural wi- fi’ that monitors what is happening in the other people. This system tracks their emotions, what movements they’re making, what they intend and it activates, in our brains, precisely the same brain areas as are active in the other person. This puts us on the same wavelength and it does it automatically, instantaneously and unconsciously’ (Goleman, 2006).”

8. Section 1.2: Intention Understanding • Meaningful gestures produced stronger MEPs than those that were not meaningful, regardless of the participants familiarity with the gesture or meaning (Molnar- Szakacset al., 2007). • Which part of ethnicity created the difference? Was it because of culture, race, or the combination? • Are there detectable universalities when our actions have meanings vs. when they do not?

9. Section 2: Emotional Empathy • “A neural mechanism like the MNS, that uses our own representations of intentions and actions in order to understand the same in others is the ideal neural substrate for empathy, defined as the inter-personal sharing of experiences, emotions and feelings.In fact, empathy may be considered a special case of a more general state-matching reaction (resonance) that is fast, automatic and pre-cognitive.” • Researchers found a “similar network of activated areas – including the premotor face area, the posterior IFG, the superior temporal sulcus, the insula, and the amygdala – for both imitation and observation of emotional facial expressions (Carr et al., 2003). • Imitating it different than expressing an emotion because you feel it. • Watching emotional recruited portions of the limbic system in addition to MNS which are important for emotional processing.

10. Section 2.1: Cognitive Empathy • “Cognitive empathy requires that we actively think about, or reflect on others’ actions and emotional states, which requires effortful, higher-level cogitations, including perspective-taking or mentalizing.” • Double Dissociation of Emotional and Cognitive empathy. • You don’t have to have one to have the other. • They (can) operate independently.

11. Section 3: Development of social evaluation and empathy • bla • bla • bla • bla • Bla • bla

12. Section 4: From actions to empathy to morality • bla • bla • bla • bla • Bla • bla

13. Section 5: Conclusion • bla • bla • bla • bla • Bla • bla

14. Future Research • Are mirror neuron activation dependent on or related to pre-existing ability? (whether we can do something and/or are good at it, either physical or emotional) • Investigate mirror neurons in motor areas for people who can’t use those areas and never learned how (for instance people born with paralyzed limbs, or children who have not learned how to do those things yet). • It could help isolate the problem if we know mirror neuron activity relates to ability. • This knowledge could provide advancement towards medication or therapy for people with inability to have lack of emotional or cognitive empathy.

15. Discussion Questions • bla • bla • bla