I just finished a book by Marco Iacoboni entitled Mirroring People. I saw it on the “New Books” shelf at the library and the title attracted my attention. Not until the end of the book does Iacoboni claim that his research is existential neurology. That made me smile. 
Most of the book is about the research on mirror neurons and how it works. I only provide a few sketchy notes below. To learn more about mirror neurons, check out this 2005 Nova clip which provides a fun introduction.
The research in mirror neurons is still primarily introductory research but it kind of excites me because it points to some of the stuff I’ve been grappling with in terms of how our abstract categorical language keeps us from fully realizing who it is we are (see God is a verb), my issues with Christianity (see Narcissism and Christianity), and my more recent interest in Existentialism (see Do We Seek Meaning? Or Do We Seek the Experience of Being Alive).
A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when a monkey performs an action and when it sees someone else performing that action. The neuron mirrors the behavior of the other animal. These single cell neurons have been directly observed in monkeys but not in humans because of the invasive procedure necessary to observe single cell neurons. However, with the use of an fMRI, neurologists can observe human brain patterns that seem to show that humans likewise have mirror neurons and that these neurons likewise predict the action that follows the one observed.
A long held view is that the mind is something like a computer, but another view is taking its place – “that our mental processes are shaped by our bodies and by the types of perceptual and motor experiences that are the product of their movement through an interaction with the surrounding world. The view is generally called embodied cognition, and the version of this theory especially dedicated to language is known as embodied semantics.” The discovery of mirror neurons reinforces that cognition and language are embodied.
Iacoboni says that it is only after we feel emotions internally that we are able to explicitly recognize them. Most people who are shown pictures of people will mimic their facial expressions and the mirror neuron system of their brains will light up significantly. If they are asked to hold a pencil in their mouth while watching the facial expressions, neurons will light up, but not as significantly. This seems counterintutive because we’ve bought into the opposite theory – that we must first recognize emotions before we feel them. But there is no evidence whatsoever to uphold this theory. Indeed, if you think about how you feel, it is pre-reflective.
We tend to view our “self” as distinguishable from the “other”, but the discovery of mirror neurons are challenging this theory, too. Iacoboni says the problem is that “Western culture is dominated by an individualistic, solipsistic framework that has taken for granted the assumption of a complete separation between self and other. We are entrenched in this idea that any suggestion of interdependence of self and other may sound not just counterintuitive to us, but difficult, if not impossible, to accept.” Mirror neurons put the self and the other back together again. Also, there have been studies done that show a deficit of mirror neurons is a key factor for social disorders.
There is a whole new discipline emerging called neuroethics which has come about through the questions raised by the discovery of mirror neurons. Iacoboni writes, “The classical conflict between those who emphasize the biological determinism of human behavior and those who insist that our ideas and social behavior rise above our neurobiological makeup has never considered the possibility that our neurobiology dictates our social behavior to begin with.”
In addition to the mirror neuron system, there may also be a default state network that is concerned with both self and other, in which self and other are interdependent. Iacoboni calls these two selfs “two sides of the same coin.” Iacoboni says he is convinced that, “Mirror neurons are the brain cells that fill the gap between self and other by enabling some sort of simulation or inner imitation of actions of others.”
The most dominant view in Western culture in thinking about the mind originates from a position that goes back to Descartes that the starting point of the mind is the private, individual, solitary act of thinking. But according to Merleau-Ponty, “I live in the facial expression of the other, as I feel him living in mine.” And Wittgenstein: “We see emotion… We do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom. We describe the face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.” According to Iacoboni, mirror neurons explain how the existential phenomenologists got it right and Descartes got it wrong.
Another consideration is that numerable studies show that we are not in control of our own choices – we have an overestimation of self-knowledge. Therefore, we can’t use our understanding of the self as a model for understanding other people if we have such a limited knowledge of our selves. We must make our inferences through a less abstract process. Mirror neuron activity reflects an experience-based, pre-reflective form of understanding other minds and the best description seems to be interdependence. (Remember Hamlet – “to be or not to be” – that’s not the question!!”)
Iacoboni claims that Existentialism has gotten a bad wrap. I totally agree! He says it is far more optimistic and about an empathetic, caring society, than it is about dread and despair. Existentialism, Iacoboni writes, “invites us to embrace meaning in this world, the world of our experience, rather than identifying meaning on some metaphysical plane, outside ourselves. Mirror neurons are the cells in our brain that make our experience, mostly made of interactions with other people, deeply meaningful. This is why I call the mirror neuron research an existential neuroscience of sorts.” It may sound like an oxymoron, but both existentialism and mirror neurons teach us to be suspicious of rigid dichotomies. (He cites Hubert Dreyfus who gave a Presidential Address to the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association emphasizing what is wrong with the analytic/continental dichotomy and reminded attendees why both “sides” of philosophy are important. ) Mirror neurons show that we are not alone and are biologically wired and evolutionarily designed to be deeply interconnected with one another. Iacoboni also cites Kierkegaard who proposed that our existence becomes meaningful only to a commitment to the finite and temporal. It is this commitment that defines us. Iacoboni says the neural resonance between self and other that mirror neurons allow is, in his opinion, the embodiment of such a condition.
We are wired for empathy. Perhaps it is the fact that we fell for abstract thought and became, as Nietzsche put it, meaning junkies and that has allowed for the current atrocities we find ourselves living with? We quit trusting ourselves in favor of abstract values.
Iacoboni says that we have been taught that the biological determinism of individual behavior is contrasted by a view of humans capable of rising above their biological makeup to define themselves through their ideas and their social codes. Mirror neuron research shows, however, that our social codes are largely dictated by our biology. Iacoboni believes that this understanding could have an immense effect on how we understand ourselves and how we relate to one another.