Aspies For Freedom

Some scientists say humans can read minds
Mirror neurons may generate ability to empathize
By Ker Than
LiveScience
Updated: 4:54 p.m. ET April 27, 2005

Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science.

Some scientists now believe they may have finally discovered its root. We're all essentially mind readers, they say.

The idea has been slow to gain acceptance, but evidence is mounting.

Mirror neurons
In 1996, three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a macaque monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning movements. The cluster of cells fired not only when the monkey performed an action, but likewise when the monkey saw the same action performed by someone else. The cells responded the same way whether the monkey reached out to grasp a peanut, or merely watched in envy as another monkey or a human did.

Because the cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, the neuroscientists named them "mirror neurons."

Later experiments confirmed the existence of mirror neurons in humans and revealed another surprise. In addition to mirroring actions, the cells reflected sensations and emotions.

"Mirror neurons suggest that we pretend to be in another person's mental shoes," says Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. "In fact, with mirror neurons we do not have to pretend, we practically are in another person's mind."

Since their discovery, mirror neurons have been implicated in a broad range of phenomena, including certain mental disorders. Mirror neurons may help cognitive scientists explain how children develop a theory of mind (ToM), which is a child's understanding that others have minds similar to their own. Doing so may help shed light on autism, in which this type of understanding is often missing.

'Vulcan Approach'
Over the years, cognitive scientists have come up with a number of theories to explain how ToM develops. The "theory theory" and "simulation theory" are currently two of the most popular.

Theory theory describes children as budding social scientists. The idea is that children collect evidence -- in the form of gestures and expressions -- and use their everyday understanding of people to develop theories that explain and predict the mental state of people they come in contact with.

Vittorio Gallese, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma in Italy and one of original discovers of mirror neurons, has another name for this theory: he calls it the "Vulcan Approach," in honor of the Star Trek protagonist Spock, who belonged to an alien race called the Vulcans who suppressed their emotions in favor of logic. Spock was often unable to understand the emotions that underlie human behavior.

Gallese himself prefers simulation theory over this Vulcan approach.

Natural mind readers
Simulation theory states that we are natural mind readers. We place ourselves in another person’s "mental shoes," and use our own mind as a model for theirs.

Gallese contends that when we interact with someone, we do more than just observe the other person’s behavior. He believes we create internal representations of their actions, sensations and emotions within ourselves, as if we are the ones that are moving, sensing and feeling.

Many scientists believe that mirror neurons embody the predictions of simulation theory. "We share with others not only the way they normally act or subjectively experience emotions and sensations, but also the neural circuits enabling those same actions, emotions and sensations: the mirror neuron systems," Gallese told LiveScience.

Gallese points out, however, that the two theories are not mutually exclusive. If the mirror neuron system is defective or damaged, and our ability to empathize is lost, the observe-and-guess method of theory theory may be the only option left. Some scientists suspect this is what happens in autistic people, whose mental disorder prevents them from understanding the intentions and motives of others.

Tests underway
The idea is that the mirror neuron systems of autistic individuals are somehow impaired or deficient, and that the resulting "mind-blindness" prevents them from simulating the experiences of others. For autistic individuals, experience is more observed than lived, and the emotional undercurrents that govern so much of our human behavior are inaccessible. They guess the mental states of others through explicit theorizing, but the end result is a list -- mechanical and impersonal -- of actions, gestures and expressions void of motive, intent, or emotion.

Several labs are now testing the hypothesis that autistic individuals have a mirror neuron deficit and cannot simulate the mental states of others.

One recent experiment by Hugo Theoret and colleagues at the University of Montreal showed that mirror neurons normally active during the observation of hand movements in non-autistic individuals are silent in those who have autism.

"You either simulate with mirror neurons, or the mental states of others are completely precluded to you," said Iacoboni.
© 2005 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7656021/

[*BOLD BY ME *]

Umm not intuiting motives is NOT the same as understanding emotionals. You understand emotions because you have as many autistics do.

How is the lack of mirror neurons a deficit?? They are neurological delusion/illusion inducers. (hey psst< buddy you are not really reading someones mind- DUH)

[quote]Scientists say that humans can read minds[u]

They implys that we are not human. :mad:

It implies we are nto neurotypical. Please tell me you are not serious!

If you see that an anatomy chart of the human body has 2 legs, and you have only 1, does this mean the makers of the chart don't think you are human? No, it simply means that a typical human being is born with 2 legs.

Scientists are quite aware that autistics are physically able to interbreed with neurotypicals...  Anyway, people with autism can 'read minds' (what an awful simplification), Aspies certainly do.  I'm quite capable of understanding what other people may be thinking, what their motives may be, I can feel envy.  I'm not very good at utilising this in certain situations though, like conversation.

Well, as far as I am aware, the mirror neuron theory does not refer to intellectually reading minds, but to automatic processes whereby seeing something like a facial expression automatically evokes the emotion that "fits" with it in others.

This actually 'confirms' my speculation about empathy in the General forum - there is a difference between instinctively evoked 'empathy' and intellectually derived 'sympathy' (which is based on feelings evoked by the facts of a situation, being able to sympathise and understand why someone feels a certain way when you KNOW the reasons why they feel that way, e.g. you are told or something).

Dreamer said " I'm quite capable of understanding what other people may be thinking, what their motives may be, I can feel envy."

I do struggle with understanding what other people are thinking, and I don't have the emotion of envy, are the two connected? I am glad I don't feel envy because it certainly seem to be a negative emotion anyway.

I fairly devoid of envy myself

OH dear. I have learnt envy in the last three years or so. It is not such a nice one. At least i get it rarely and not unreasonably. mostly i get envious of my brothers.

Let me put it this way, I'm very envious of your lack of envy. :smile:
I wonder if lack of envy means you have a certain mental deficiency, or you're just a better, more accepting human being!  The latter, I tend to think.

Actually it's really interesting how we can and can't use empathy in certain ways.  I can usually work out what someone is thinking (to extents limited by my lack of telepathy...) but I wouldn't have a clue what someone else would be thinking in a conversation or something.  So where NTs would be able to figure out the appropriate responses in a social situation, I'm completely useless.

"see things from their perspective"? What you mean some people can swap minds with another person and actually see things through their eyes? :shock:

"We're all essentially mind readers"  :shock:

It seems pretty strange to me that we are the ones who are supposed to have a psyachiatric disorder, while they guys who think up these extraordinary ideas are supposed to be sane!

There's a difference between mind-reading and empathy.

Empathy ---  relating to another person

Mind-reading ---  hearing/reading another person's (or animal's) actual thoughts

Don't the scientists know that?

Or the journalists, who seem to love nothing more than to completely ruin a science article with hideously simplistic terminology and cliches, so that the reader is either patronised, or filled with pride that they think they understood a thing about what them there 'scienticians' was talkin' about.

Eve being the first aspie is an interesting idea.
If Adam was the first NT, then Cain and Abel were born. Would they have been NT, one an aspie? But one killed the other, hmm.

Some people think Jesus was an aspie.

"For autistic individuals, experience is more observed than lived, and the emotional undercurrents that govern so much of our human behavior are inaccessible. They guess the mental states of others through explicit theorizing, but the end result is a list -- mechanical and impersonal -- of actions, gestures and expressions void of motive, intent, or emotion."

This doesn't really fit my experience. Throughout my life I've had the ability to assist people to feel that their voice has been heard.  I seem to have the knack of being able to facilitate some sort of psychological release. People come to me to talk about their troubles and I help them. It's been going on with me for years. What typically happens is that a person will come to me with an issue. It might be an argument that person has had, or something like a divorce, death, or other difficult experience. I don't understand why but I seem to be gifted to be able to reduce or heal the pain of others through "being" with them rather than doing the NT thing of chattering away to try to change and conquer the other's mental state. I can even "feel" the moment when this psychological release happens in the person I am interacting with. It's like a burst of joy that we both then experience. I'm sorry if that sounds kookoo. I do believe there is potential in the human and/or Aspie psyche, that scientists cannot yet understand and that science possibly cannot ever tell us.  




"One recent experiment by Hugo Theoret and colleagues at the University of Montreal showed that mirror neurons normally active during the observation of hand movements in non-autistic individuals are silent in those who have autism."

"You either simulate with mirror neurons, or the mental states of others are completely precluded to you," said Iacoboni."


I will concede that maybe NTs have this sort of empathy going on all the time over everything and therefore they have information to know what others are feeling. I haven't seen much evidence of empathy in the sense of their ability to use this empathy to care for others. In my experience NTs are quite vicious with one another. What I have noted is that my empathy for others is hyperfocused or like a beam of light that isn't switched on all the time, but when it is switched on I seem to have greater empathy than most NT to assist others to be heard. It is difficult to describe without sounding like I am tooting my own horn about being empathic.




© 2005 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7656021/