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13.2 Social neuroscience Theory of mid, empathy, mirror neurons and aggression

Theory of mind

  • Awareness that other individuals have mental states that are different from our own
  • Develops in humans around 4-5 years of age

Empathy

  • ability to share another person's feelings
  • Types of empathy feeling
    • Personal distress
      • when witnessing someone's suffering causes your own discomfort
    • Sympathy
      • Can feel concern or sorrow for someone but don't about shared feeling like personal distress
  • Cognitive empathy: knowing
    • understanding another person's perspective intellectually

Aggression

  • Definition: behaviour aimed at harming or injuring another living being
    • Physical aggression
    • Relational aggression

Mirror neurons

  • Mirror neurons are specialized brain cells that activate both when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing the same action.
  • Activity in some brain areas in MRI study both if a participant experienced pain and if they saw a loved one experience pain

Regarding human studies: - Most human "mirror neuron" research uses fMRI or EEG, which measure broader neural activity rather than individual neurons - We can't directly observe single neuron activity in humans the way researchers did with monkeys - What's often called "mirror system activity" in humans may involve various neural networks

On explaining empathy: - Mirror neurons likely contribute to empathy but aren't sufficient to explain it - Empathy involves multiple processes including emotion regulation, perspective-taking, and contextual understanding - People with autism, sometimes characterized by empathy differences, don't consistently show mirror system deficits

Methodological issues: - Correlational rather than causal evidence dominates the field - Difficult to isolate mirror neuron activity from other neural processes - Risk of reverse inference (assuming mental states from brain activation)

Cause-and-effect questions:

  • Does mirror neuron activity cause empathy, or might empathic tendencies enhance mirror system development?
  • Individual differences in empathy can't be reduced to mirror neuron function alone

The mirror neuron hypothesis for empathy represents an intriguing but oversimplified explanation for complex social-cognitive abilities that likely involve numerous brain systems working together.