I’ve recently been on some intensive trauma training and some of the things we have been covering have been fascinating. One of the areas we looked at was Empathy – which is no surprise as every good therapist should be able express empathy, it is what allows us to meet or clients with our hearts as well as our minds. So naturally, most training covers this.
However, what we covered this time was a little different. We discussed some research into Mirror Neurons which basically allows us to really ‘get’ the experience of others, even if we have never had the experience ourselves. I have to say – part of me really wasn’t surprised by this but at the same time I’m absolutely blown away that there is some research to prove this, and true to all good research it happened by accident.
In 1996, an Italian neuroscience research team led by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese was studying grasping behaviours in monkeys. As a side note I have to say that this was a non-invasive experiment and the monkeys were not harmed during this experiment or I really would not be writing about it.
Electrodes were attached to the monkeys’ brains in order to observe precisely which neurons fired when a monkey grabbed a raisin with its hand. The research was routine: monkey grasped; specific neurons fired. Then, during a break, one of the researchers hungrily reached out for a raisin. His fellow researchers coincidently noticed something extraordinary on the monitor: Neurons in the monkey’s brain fired—the exact same neurons that had fired earlier when the monkey grasped a raisin itself!
The team was astonished: Nothing like this had ever been seen before. Their serendipitous finding was the first clue to the existence of what scientists now call “mirror neurons,” so-called because they appear to actually reflect the activity of another’s brain cells. The monkey’s response was not just simple recognition, as in “I know what the researcher is doing.” That kind of observation is activated elsewhere in the brain.
What happened between monkey and researcher required a brand-new concept the monkey’s neuron fired as if it had made the same movement itself. This was a genuine brain-to-brain connection. In an instant, the definition of interconnectedness, the notion of empathy, changed forever.
Subsequent neuroimaging research in humans suggests that we, too, may have a similar mirror-neuron system that allows us to deeply “get” the experience of others. When people watch other individuals drumming their fingers, kicking a ball, or biting into an apple, the sectors of their brains that turn on are the same sectors that activate when they perform these behaviours themselves. Based on this, it is of course possible to truly understand the experience of others.
So, during the training we did a little experiment. In groups of two, we went into a room and one of us thought about an intense experience whilst the other person tried to tune in to the feeling. Bearing in mind, I hardly knew my partner, both of us managed to describe exactly what the other person was feeling and experience the very same body sensations that they were. We couldn’t get the words or circumstance but the sensations – they were absolutely spot on.
So – can you really know how I feel? The answer is, at least from my perspective – absolutely! Why not try the above experiment out for yourself and see.