Saturday, June 25, 2011

Reflection, Validation, and the Most Important Discovery in Neuroscience



Dr. Ramachandran’s TED Talks discussion of mirror neurons, is the awesomest thing.





Not everybody shares Dr. Ramachandran’s opinions about the importance of mirror neurons.  But I do!

The notion of mirroring is so central to human relationships, seeing yourself in others is absolutely crucial to discovering who you are and what you want.  It may be speculation, but there must be biological underpinnings to this process that are widely shared – because they allow society and civilization.  Reflection and social connectedness is a theme in most if not all of the major religions (Prothero, 2011).  This is a process that is so crucial to our humanness it deserves to be studied more fully. 

I have been reading an AMAZING article relating mirror neurons and Theory of Mind (ToM) in humans (Gallese & Goldman, 1998).  If mirror neurons are the basis of a certain kind of empathy, or theory of mind, then we must explore this more fully.

A note about the research so far:  Not everybody is equal in terms of empathic capacity or theory of mind.  It is unlikely that anything so finicky as mirror neurons should show the same activation in all people, without regard to their trait levels of such variables.  And in order to measure empathic capacity or theory of mind in adults, researchers have to get creative.  Perhaps an emotion-induction procedure followed by a validation procedure can help us get to where we need to be?

A note on social media:  The process of seeing oneself reflected on a computer screen has not been studied empirically in enough detail.  How important is it to me that blogging reflects a part of my mind I don’t express anywhere else?  How important is it to know that somebody who reads this, gets it? 

Pretty important, I think.

Social media and blogging are likely to be one of the best platforms for studying the processes relating to ToM (self-consciousness and other consciousness) and its potential neural underpinnings, in adults.  This is so exciting!  Has this been done anywhere?  Did I miss it?  When can we get started???

2 comments:

  1. Fascinating topic, Nadine. I think as humans we inherently crave feelings of connectedness. Harlow's monkeys, anyone? There are obvious exceptions to this (i.e., antisocial PD), but it's interesting to think how this may be happening on a neurological level. What does this mean for us? Does being a blogger or vlogger heighten this capacity, or is it an expression of something that is already there? Probably both.

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  2. Thanks for commenting :)  I am starting to think that connectedness is central to human consciousness.  Take the following quote for example: "It is not the consciousness of men that
    determines their existence, but their social existence that determines
    their consciousness" (Marx
    1971:20). Is this not a cool thought?

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