>> Kim Ricketts: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. My name is Kim
Ricketts, and I manage along with Kirsten Wiley, the Microsoft research
visiting speaker series. Thanks for finding our lecture room today. Not our
usual one. Today we welcome Marco Lacoboni to Microsoft Research to discuss
some of the most interesting developments that have happened in neuroscience in
a century. Within the past decade scientists have found that neurons in the
brain can provide a plausible explanation for why we can read each other
intimately and in fact why we are driven to do so. The discovery of these
mirror neurons has opened the door to a wide range of experiments and research
that suggest our brain is capable of mirroring the deepest aspects of the minds
of others, at the level of a single cell in fact. And we do it effortlessly
and continuously. This discovery will have ground-breaking repercussions in
many fields, from education to marketing to ethics to politics and much more.
Dr. Lacoboni has been involved in the experiments since the beginning, barely
20 years ago, and is here to walk us through these experiments and others that
have led the way in studying mirror neurons. He is currently the director of
the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab (inaudible) David Geffen School of
Medicine in Los Angeles. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Marco Lacoboni to
Microsoft Research.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Marco Lacoboni: Thank you for that introduction. And I must say that you
stole the whole lecture. I don't know what to say now.
All right. Let me give you little summary or overview of what I want to
discuss today:
Yeah, I want to the start really with the discovery of mirror neurons, explain
(inaudible) these cells I've discovered. And in fact even the way the cells
were discovered, I think, tells us a lot about what we, how we perceive things,
how our assumptions sometime make us blind to phenomenon under our nose. There
are studies that in fact, probably not so true, around these cells (inaudible)
discovered (inaudible) it took scientists a lot of time to figure out that they
had this phenomenon and the rights. There are these stories in which people
say, well, some, one day, one scientist grasped a peanut, and there was a fight
in the cell. And there was this immediate realization that these cells in the
brain of the monkey. So didn't actually go that way. It is a much more, much
longer, more complex process.
And then I also want to say in this initial part of the talk, what these cells
really do. Because there is a chemist simplicity idea what these cells do. I
think that in the media and in the general public, some of the main features
have been captured; but these cells are much more flexible and much more
interesting than what people think they are.
And so (inaudible) I'm going to talk about the monkey findings, the experiments
done in the monkey brain.
And then I like to move along to the work that we have done in the human brain,
mostly using brain imaging. And the first thing we thought, okay, well, if
these cells fire when we make an action, when we see other people making
actions. Of course it seems that the nice properties for actually being very
important for imitation. And it turns out imitation is really a fundamental
way in which people learn and even connect.
There is a psychologist from Holland that says that imitation is a social glue.
If I start imitating you, suddenly you are going to like me much more than if I
don't. There is plenty of connection, that just the body movements we do
together really get us together at an emotional level.
So we started really working the human brain looking at imitation patterns
using brain imaging, and I want to tell you few things about that.
But then we also thought, well, if these cells are really fired up when we make
actions or when we see other people making action, every time we act there is
an intention behind the action. And so we thought, well, could it be that
these cells really (inaudible) not really just the actions of people, but the
deeper mental states associated with those actions. We have done some studies
I'm going to cover briefly in which we really demonstrate these cells and the
system in the human brain. What it does is to code the intentions of others,
which is something that for centuries in philosophy minds have been considering
really a difficult problem to solve. It is called the problem of other minds.
How can we actually access the minds of others if we know only our own mind.
And it seems that evolution has devised a very simple mechanism that let us
understand, in the very simple (inaudible) way, the mental states of other
people when we see them involved in their everyday actions.
But then if we are so good at getting into the minds of others, can we actually
even feel what other people feel. And so one of the claims I'm going to make
today is that evolution has again shaped the system in our brain that make us
wired for empathy. And I think this is really a major revision of the
long-standing beliefs. The classical belief is that ideology is all about
self-preservation, all about individualism. And we become social animals with
our higher order ideas, with our intellect. It seems that we are actually
built biologically to empathize with others I'm going to show you some
important data that support this concept.
And, you know, if we are really good at feeling what other people feel, I think
that the distance between self and other, it's one of the major framework,
especially in western societies that, you know, individuals are all, you know,
detached from other people. Really self (inaudible) they get much closer.
That's why (inaudible) is the team, what mirror neurons really demonstrate is
the (inaudible) of self in others. (Inaudible) much closer than we think they
are. And I think that's again an important, important message especially to
send out because there's -- we are so good at dividing ourself from other
people, especially using our beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs. If
we really look at, deep inside our brains organized, it seems that we are
really so attuned to each other, that if we pay attention to our biology rather
than our beliefs, I think our society would be much more empathic.
Of course one thing that we started speculating and then we demonstrated, there
is a link between this system and (inaudible) of social behavior (inaudible)
they're broken mirror. Sometimes this system doesn't work at its full
potential, and what happens in individuals at the, hypoactivity in these brain
areas.
And so we have this idea that disorders of social behavior may be linked to a
hypo functioning of the system, and we have evidence to that. I'm going to
show you that evidence. The nice implication about this work is that some
people already using our constructs to build interventions on individuals that
have problems in social behavior that in fact can help these individuals.
I was talking to Sally Rogers of UC Davis a few months ago, and she started
this program on, using imitation as a form of interventions. And it turns out,
she telling me the results are just amazing. They are preliminary results, but
they are really exciting.
So that's very exciting because they tend to do -- the (inaudible) fascinating,
but that it doesn't have a lot of immediate applications. And in this
particular field it seems that, you know, in few years we went from the
discovery in the monkey to the real application in humans.
And to follow-up (inaudible) that's the way the book ends, is if we really
revise all our ideas about our biology and our intellect and we, who we are,
and we understand our condition better, I mean, really seems to me that this
tells us that we can use neuroscience and any other kind of scientistic
discovery to make a strong change in our society. I think that the message
where, it is coming out of the lab is that, in fact, again we are much more
(inaudible) than we think we are.
I mean, the more this message gets outside and we are, we become really aware
of this, I think it is going to also change the way we think about a lot of
things in our society.
So that's the final message of the book, and it's a message of course of hope
and optimism.
All right. I tend to talk to fellow neuroscientists so I have this tendency to
get sometimes -- scientists, what they do, the practice of science is getting
into the details of science.
I try not to forget that, almost that I'm talking about the brain, but I have
to tell you something about the brain of course when I try to explain to you
how this discovery was made.
Here's a figure of the higher brain. It's a macaques brain. And the
(inaudible) that have to do with actions. Every time the monkey makes an
action, some of these cells fire up.
And by studying these areas, we have a better understanding how the brain
controls movement and our own reactions.
And the group of (inaudible) was studying cells in F-5, which is a little brain
region in the (inaudible) cortex. And in this region they were studying cells
that fire for grasping. Now, grasping is a fundamental behavior in our
everyday life. Try to get out of the house without grasping the doorknob. We
grasp things continuously. If I want -- I do (inaudible) what do I do. I
grasp it. So grasping is really something that we do continuously. It is very
important to understand how grasping works at the level of the brain.
And of course they, they weren't expected, expecting at all to find these
cells. Again, the story that you often read in newspapers, in the media is
that, well, they were studying these cells. There was an electrode in a monkey
brain. And one experimenter grasped something, and the scientist read the
discharge of the cell. And there was this immediate realization that mirror
neurons were in the monkey brain. There is another story. It is very popular.
Actually I was telling this story in my seminars years ago. And it's a really
cute story. And it involves a (inaudible) Italian ice creams. They're
notoriously very good. So the idea was that during a break from an experiment,
he goes out of the lab. And then he comes -- buys it, an ice-cream. And he is
still working on the ice-cream when he gets back into the lab.
The monkey is sitting on the chair. There was an electric implant in the
monkey brain. And every time the (inaudible) licks the ice-cream, there is a
discharge of the cell. And (inaudible) immediately realizes that these cell
firing not only for the action of the monkey but also from the action of other
people.
So (inaudible) well, I tell these stories. But why don't I check these stories
are believable or not. I call my (inaudible) friends back in Paramount
(phonetic). And they told me, you know what, I don't know where these stories
does, but these are all (inaudible) I mean, we actually, at some point we had
the progressive realization that something like that was going on.
We can't even remember these southern inside. Because even then, that we're
really open-minded neuroscientists, the assumption was that in the eyes of the
brain that control movement, those neurons don't respond to visual stimuli and
especially don't respond to actions of others. So every time there was some
kind of a discharge in association with the actions of the experimenters, they
would just dismiss that or they would consider this discharge very complex
visual motor response. They were not really saying, oh, yeah, it according the
action. It took them years to figure out what was going on. And that tells
you a lot about the assumption we make in science. I mean, you have got to
make some assumptions because, otherwise, the idea we try to study is too
complex. So we have to have some (inaudible) assumptions, some hypotheses.
But sometimes these assumptions really make us blind to phenomena that are just
in front of us.
And so it really took them a long time to figure out that these cells fire not
only when the monkey grasps an object but also when the monkey observes
somebody else grasping an object. At some point they (inaudible) the
realization. And then they decided to do a series of control experiments to
really figure out if that was the case or if there was something funny going on
and if there was some kind of artifact.
Well, 15 years later or 20 years later we learned it is not a artifact, and we
learned a lot about these cells. So what I'm going to tell you is, some of the
properties of these cells.
So the basic finding is the following one. These are neurophysiological
(inaudible). It's called laughter. Each one of these lines and each one of
these little marks represents an action potential when the cell fires.
And at the bottom we have a histogram that tells us the firing rate change over
time. So these are a bunch of trials. So every time on the right side, when
the monkey grasps, the cell fires very strongly. And you see these robust
firing change. But also when the monkey observes somebody else grasping, and
the trials here aligned at the moment in which the monkey sees the human
grasping the object, you also have a robust firing rate change. So the cells
really seems to be recording for both what the monkey does when the monkey
simply -- in fact, one of the early names of these cells was a monkey do,
monkey see cell.
And so that's -- I mean, you know, the name mirror neuron really captures well
this concept. And it really captures the findings that we tend to imitate each
other and to mirror each other all the time. On the other hand, it's also a
little bit limiting because these cells are more complex than that.
So of course they are cells that are specialized for actions. They don't
fire -- when some people complain that we think the mirror neurons do
everything. One thing you have to remember is that, for instance, they will
not fire if you present just an object in front of a monkey.
If the monkey doesn't see an action, there is no firing of those cells. So
they are really specialized and seem to be really concerned with actions of the
self and of other people.
But they only fire for the same action but often for complementary action.
There is 1/3 of cells that are called strictly comrade mirror neurons. They
always fire for the same action that they could from a (inaudible) standpoint.
But 2/3 of those cells, actually we call them (inaudible) comrade mirror
neurons because they fire also for actions that are complementary or that
achieve the same goal of the action that is (inaudible) from a (inaudible)
standpoint.
And IF you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because human interactions
are interactions between individuals of a society. Can't just be based on
mirroring. If a baby cries, you don't want the mother to cry. You want the
mother to do something to help the baby. And so the coding of complementary
action is really very important to facilitate social interactions.
They also fire for hidden actions. Sometimes you see somebody busy with
some (inaudible) but you don't see the whole action. You only see a part of
it. And it turns out there are nicely controlled studies that show that, if
you see the initial component of the action and you know that, for instance,
behind the screen there is something to be grasped, the cell also fires. So it
doesn't have to have the complete action inside order to code that guy is doing
that thing.
In fact the original scientific paper that published these findings, the title
was, "I Know What You're Doing".
You also fire in complete darkness or without the sight of an action for sounds
associated with action. And that is also very important because often our
actions are associated with sounds. We recognize, we are able to recognize the
footsteps of our colleagues when they are walking in the hallway. And it turns
out these cells fire -- I mean, we are, the study weren't done on foot steps in
the hallway but they were done on sounds, like for instance, breaking peanuts
or tearing paper and so on. All these sounds drive the response of the cell,
even when the monkey is not seeing the action at all. And that's, I think, a
remarkable property because it tells us that these cells really have a fairly
obstruct coding of the actions of other people. They fire for the action of
self, from the sight of an action, for complementary actions and even for
actions sounds. So they really have (inaudible) the same, same very cell. So
at the single -- the other single cell you have a really kind of obstruct
coding of actions of others and of cells.
And, you know, the most popular ones are cells that fire for grasping and hand
actions. And of course they are very important for communication. We use our
hands to, when we talk all the time. There is plenty of evidence in front of
people, even over the phone when they know that nobody is watching them, they
still use gestures when they talk. And there are linguists that say that
gestures and words are part of one system, which is language. Of course
Italians use it much more.
But there are also cells that code for (inaudible) actions and facial
movements. I think that's very important. Because when we get to the aspect
of empathy, we want to remember that in fact we transmit our emotional
expression very often with our face.
So these are a study done by (inaudible). He's an interesting guy because he
got his PhD working with a scientist that studies monkeys' behavior. After his
PhD they did a post document throughout his lab doing single unitary codings in
the monkeys. And you can tell that he studied behaviors of monkeys very well
because he is really good at doing these kind of gestures. He studied
(inaudible) gestures like biting a banana or drinking juice from a syringe
or -- that's the way juice is delivered to monkeys that live in the lab. They
get juice through the syringe and (inaudible) so that's an important matter,
too.
And also communicative gestures. (Inaudible) lip smacking, facial gesture of
positive balance in monkeys' social communication.
So there are mirror neurons also for these facial gestures. I think those are
important when it gets really to the point I'm trying to figure out, how these
cells implement empathy understanding the feelings of others because we use our
face a lot in order to convey what we feel.
Well, at some point we thought, well, it was really early on. They had just
published the full blown paper in '96 on mirror neurons. And so (inaudible)
asked me to be part of an international -- I was already back here in L.A.
here. Well, yeah, down there.
A lot of people think (inaudible) because I'm Italian and because I've done
early work on mirror neurons. I published papers with (inaudible). And so of
course it's a (inaudible) assumption. Probably Lacoboni was (inaudible) and
moved to the U.S. Turns out I'm from the eternal city, from Rome. And I met
with (inaudible) when I was already in L.A., and we met in Prague.
so he asked me to be part of this international group that wanted to study
mirror neurons in the monkey brain but also in the human brain. I'm a brain
imager. I do brain mapping. Brain imaging. I use mostly MRI. In those days
we were using also a little bit of (inaudible), and now we use a lot of
transmagnetic stimulation, which is a nice technique because it gives you
complementary information compared to MRI. And I'll briefly tell you couple
studies on that. We are using TMS.
So the idea was that, well, how do we translate, you know, the (inaudible) try
to explain how we kind of think how we are experimenting, and we move from the
monkey brain to the human brain. So we thought, well, let's try to translate
the findings in the monkey brain with findings we can possibly have in the
human brain. And of course we were inspired by the work of somebody who
actually lives here, (inaudible). He has done amazing work on mirror neuron
imitation, and we thought of course the properties of these cells seem to be
very important for imitation. And then the (inaudible) has really done amazing
work in demonstrating that we really learn by imitation. When he did this
work, the classical, the main, the dominant view in the (inaudible) psychology
was that babies do not imitate right away. And actually toddlers learn to
imitate toward the second year of life. And (inaudible) demonstrated this work
is imitation really from the get-go is a nice way of bypassing trial and error
learning. He also achieved something else I was telling -- the only guy in the
world that managed to publish a paper in one of the most prestigious papers in
science with a picture of yourself sticking your tongue out.
And so the idea was let's use imitation, imitation (inaudible) in order to test
mirroring properties in the human brain. And let's use the monkey data to try
to translate these findings in the monkey brain from the single cell to
activity in the human brain.
And so one thing we noticed very early on, there was a much higher firing when
the monkey makes the action as compared to just observing it, which kind of
makes sense, because if there was an completely identical firing change, you
would be doing the same thing all the time. You want to kind of suppress the
tendency to imitate others. And so we thought, well, let's use this firing
power and let's predict changes in activity with (inaudible). So we predicted
that there should be some activity when subject making more task. Little bit
reduced activity task when subject just observing the action. But when it
comes to imitation, when you imitate, you actually do it and see it at the same
time.
So we thought maybe there is an objectivity (phonetic) of this to see, such
that during imitation there is a stronger activity. So this was our predicted
pattern for activity for our mirror neurons in a variety of different tasks in
which sometimes you imitate and sometimes you do it and sometimes you see it.
We made a very simple study. This was the very first study using simple finger
movements, and there was a bunch of control conditions of course. And we found
two regions in the human brain with exactly the pattern we predicted, and these
two regions were located in areas of the human brain that seem to be
anatomically very similar to the areas of the monkey brain that contain mirror
neurons. One of these areas, it is in the frontal lobe, and it's called -- in
the right hemisphere it's called Broca's area. Why? Because Paul Broca, which
is a French neurologist, discovered this neural center, it is very important
for language.
So there was already a kind of a hypothesis that these cells may be precursors
of systems in the human brain that are important for language. And our finding
really kind of supported these hypothesis.
On the other hand, when you do see activation in a language area, even in low
language task, you always wonder, well, could it be that this activation is
actually due to some kind of verbalization, internal verbalization on the
subjects. So we thought, well, let's use TMS to actually, to test the
(inaudible) of this region is essential for imitation.
So again, when we do TMS (inaudible), we place a coil on the head of the
subject. We send an electric pulse. This pulse creates a magnetic field. And
the magnetic field, it is the surface of the brain which in turn generates an
electric flow in the brain. And it kind of injects noise in the brain tissue
underneath the coil, and so you can interfere with the activity of those brain
cells.
We call these, going from brain mapping to brain zapping.
So (inaudible), which we actually stimulate a Broca's area. And there were
some imitation conditions and some control condition, and we also stimulate the
sub-control side. And what we demonstrated was in fact that Broca's area is
essential to imitation. When we are -- when we stimulate the Broca's area,
these subjects were unable, were, you know, reduced performance in imitation.
And when they were doing the control task, they did not. So they are really
demonstrated this region is an essential area for imitation.
So right now we think that there are two major centers in the human brain that
contain mirror neurons. One is located in this part of the frontal lobe, that
contains also Broca's area, and another one is in the parietal lobe, which is a
part of the brain that seems to be very important part for putting together
perception and action.
And we also know that this is, in the temporal lobe, which is an area of the
brain that is really important for visual processing, there are cells that seem
to be specialized for coding the actions of others from the visual standpoint.
So the idea is that these cells really are the ones that send the visual input
to the mirror areas in the human brain.
And now I want to talk about, you know, the role, the possible role these cells
in understanding the intentions of other people. Sometimes this thing is
called mind reading. There is a whole camp, actually two major camps in the
literature when it comes to understanding the mental states of others. One
that says, well, we actually use similar operation that, you know, scientists
use when they actually study natural phenomena.
We see other people. They make certain, they have certain behaviors. And then
we will kind of make an inference from their behavior with regard to the mental
state because we can map those behaviors with our own behavior, and we know our
own mental state. So a very complex and influential process.
And actually I thought why in mirror neuron (phonetic) evolution might have
devised something so complex. After all, we read the minds of others all the
time. I'm reading your minds now, and you are reading mine. And we do this
effortlessly, continuously. So, I mean, we will be totally exhausted after 10
minutes of interacting with other people if you were using this very complex
inferential (phonetic) mechanism. Can't we use a much simpler solution
approach such that we activate the same areas that are activated when we make
these actions, when we see other people making these actions. And by doing
that we trigger cascade of signals in the brain that let us really get to the
intentions of others.
The way I introduced this issue, you know, the inferential versus the
simulative kind of way of understanding the minds of others is by introducing
these two guys. Professor Snape and Harry Potter.
I was reading the fifth book of the Harry Potter saga a long time. And I don't
know how many of you have read his books, but in this particular book
Voldemort -- which is a mean wizard indeed wants to get into Harry Potter's
mind to figure out some secrets of the mainstream magic. And Professor Snape
is supposed to teach Harry Potter to protect his mind from Voldemort to get
inside the mind of Harry. So he is explaining this to Harry, saying the dark
lord, which is Voldemort (inaudible) feelings and memories from another
person's mind.
And Harry says, he can read minds? And at that point the answer of Snape -again, I mean, after reading all the seven
books -- I like Snape much more, especially after the last one. And then at
this point, when I was reading the fifth book, I really couldn't stand this
guy. After reading what he answers to Harry, I thought, boy, after all
Professor Snape is not that bad guy because he says, you have no (inaudible)
Harry Potter. Only (inaudible) talk of mind reading. The mind is not a book.
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make with this study. It is, especially
for everyday, simple actions, you don't need to get into the symbolic level.
You can use these very simple simulation and mirroring that you have in your
brain to understand what people are thinking.
And so (inaudible) that was often cited in the media and it's been dubbed the
tea party experiment. And the main idea is that you often -- I mean, there is
no, one to one mapping between actions and intentions. I can grasp these thing
because I want a drink, or later on because I want to clean up the speaker's
desk. So the same grasping actions have several different intentions. We kind
of (inaudible) what we do are experiments. So really have to try to produce a
complex reality in something that is manageable and can make predictions.
So the idea was to imbed grasping action with different kinds of context. In
this particular situation the context suggests somebody is going to drink tea
and having some kind of tea party. Everything is neatly organized. There are
cookies. There is a tea pot and so on. We made a little video clips that we
presented to subject.
There was also a little Italian signature in this because there was a little
Mutella (phonetic) right there.
And then we had, we used the same set of stimuli that now the context really
suggests cleaning up. There are cookie crumbs, dirty napkin, dishes empty.
The (inaudible) is empty. So the grasping action is the same, but the context
behind it is different. I'm showing you two different grasping actions because
what we tend to do when we grasp is to grasp either by the body of the cup
that's called whole end preemtion or grasping from the handle of the cup. This
called precision grip. Turns out this is the way we tend to grasp in order to
drink so we kind of, we want to deal with this problem so we counterbalance the
number of these kind of grasps and the number of these kind of grasps for both
contexts.
So this is (inaudible) makes very simple prediction. If the eye (phonetic)
mirror neurons are only interested in the grasping action, they are going to
fire equally or they are going to be active equally for both conditions.
But if the action including the intention associated with the action, they
should probably also be activated differently. And here you want to see higher
activity for drinking, which is a higher, much more primary intention than
clean-up. Especially if you are (inaudible) college student.
In fact that's what we found. The classical mirror neuron, where we think
mirror neurons are contained in the frontal lobe, there was a differential
activity for watching grasping actions imbedded in the (inaudible) suggest,
drinking compared to this one.
And this really tells us that in fact what these cells do is coding the
intentions of other people rather than the actions of other people. After we
did this brain imaging experiments, the monkey people back in (inaudible) did a
similar experiment in the monkey and they even demonstrated a single cell level
you have coding for the intention rather than for the action. One of the few
cases in which brain imaging actually inspires the monkey people to do a study.
It is generally the opposite.
And one of my good friends (inaudible) is a, he knows a lot of French
terminology. Told me, well, you should really (inaudible) because he has
quotes, really idea for this kind of cells. And in fact I found one in one of
the major books on the (inaudible) perceptions. It really seems to be written
for this experiment. It is as if the other person's intentions (inaudible) my
body and mine his.
He really seems that, with these cells in the brain, it is very simple for us
to get into the deeper mental states of others. What they want to achieve with
their actions. The goals they want to achieve, the intentions associated with
those actions.
And then we thought, well, okay, let's get them to the main of emotion. If it
is possible to understanding intentions of other people, very simple actions,
everyday action, can we feel what other people feel when they express their
emotions. This is, this (inaudible) literature actually already described this
in very powerful ways.
I think that the oldest way I found was Montaigne in the 16th century. I'll
actually quote two people. (Inaudible), in one of his later works, he says, we
see emotions. We do not see facial contortions and make the inference that is
making feel joy, grief, boredom. We discover (inaudible) immediately
(inaudible) sad (inaudible), bored, even when we are unable to give any other
description of the feature. We have this automatic way of really
understanding, of capturing the debt face expresses happiness or sadness and so
on.
And Adam Smith, a long time ago, when we see a (inaudible) and just ready to
fall upon the lake or land on another person, we naturally shrink and draw back
our leg or our own arm. When it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are
hurt by it as well as the sufferer. This is a really nice description of what
empathy is about. And in fact, you know, the idea here is that if you really
have a good introspection you really see yourself already (inaudible) you have
the tendency to do these things. So the idea was, how do we actually get
mirror neurons involved in all these business of emotion because, after all,
these cells are not really located in areas of the human brain that are known
to be conservative emotions. And there was also another link, a link between
empathy and imitation. There is a phenomenon called a chameleon effect. These
are widespread phenomenon. Turns out pretty much everybody, when they interact
with other people socially, they tend to imitate each other.
This phenomenon has been studied by social psychologists. You can actually
quantify the amount of imitation that people produce. And some people are more
chameleons than others. It turns out that the more you tend to be a chameleon,
the more you tend to be (inaudible). A nice correlation between the tendency
to empathize with people and a tendency to imitate others automatically when
they interact socially.
I wanted to capture this visually because, you know, pictures are always much
more powerful than words. We found these two pictures involving former
President Carter. He is giving a speech. And this was the chief of his staff
at the time he was president. Later on, during the speech -[LAUGHTER]
>> Marco Lacoboni: So this tendency to imitate others correlates nicely with
the tendency to empathize. And so it really give us, from a (inaudible)
perspective, the idea that in fact these mirroring cells may actually interact
with emotional brain centers in order to provide empathy. But, you know, as a
neuroscientist always have to deal with, you know, the anatomy of the brain
because signals don't get transmitted, you know, just by magic in the brain.
And it turns out that, you know, while I was looking into the anatomy of the
primate brain, and of course the emotional brain centers are very different
from the mirror neurons. But I found that at least from the anatomical
connection that we are describing in the literature, there was a region of the
primate brain, (inaudible), which is a tiny, interesting region, that connects
mirror neurons with the emotional brain centers. So I thought, well, maybe the
way -- what happens when we see a happy face, and we immediately kind of feel
happiness and understand what this person is feeling.
Is by using this relatively simple method in our brain. First we simulate the
facial expression with our mirror neurons. And by doing that, we then send
signals through the insula, and through the insula, all the way to the
emotional brain centers. And here we feel the emotion that other people are
feeling.
So we did a series of studies to demonstrate that with brain imaging. We in
fact demonstrated first that there was a system in the brain, in the human
brain that, in which these three major centers go together when you observe and
when you imitate facial expression. The activity in these areas are all kind
of synchronized.
And again, these kind of remind me of another quote from (inaudible). I live
in the facial expression of the other as if (inaudible) living in mine. This
was kind of proof of concept these three regions go together and they are
activated in similarly, with similar degrees of activation in a variety of
situation in which you observe or imitate facial expression. But you really do
demonstrate that these systems are really not (inaudible) ability to empathize
with other people. So we did a series of four studies. And one thing we are
doing now, it is a study on preadolescence. And we followed them up through
adolescence. A very turbulent period. My daughter posed for me when she was
nine. She is now 12, and I bet if I ask her to pose for me today, she would
say, why would I do that. She is already full blown adolescent.
Imitating and observing facial expressions, and we use different, we use
different kind of faces so that we can also study the effect of gender, of race
and so on. But we are just preliminary data. We've just looked at the overall
effect.
And what we found, in fact the whole secret (phonetic) thing is mirror neuron
areas. This insula, and the emotional brain centers in the medulla. What they
do is not only activate as in the adult experiment we did some years ago, but
they also correlate with the ability of this (inaudible) to empathize and to be
socially competent.
We have two measures of social competence. One is called interpersonal
competence. And the questioner -- the parents filled up and they tell us how
many friends the kid has. How many play dates he gets every week. How popular
is this kid. And there is a correlation between the popularity of the kid and
the activity and desires when these kids do, either observe or imitate facial
expressions of other people.
And we also have a correlation between the empathy scores of these kids. How
much these kids are able to empathize with others and the activity in these
regions.
So we really code this system, value marker of society because it really seems
to correlate with social behavior of people.
And that's why you also say, you know, that these neurons really tell us
something about the intimacy (phonetic) of self and other.
I think there is -- these ideas that the self and the other are so, so
detached, so separated, especially in the western culture. There are some
cultures, especially the eastern ones that actually, if you read books from
those cultures, you realize that there is much more sense of community and
intimacy between self and other. But I thought, well, if these cells, if the
(inaudible) is really an intimacy between self and other and these cells really
let us read the minds of others, can they also be important for building sense
of self.
And again, most of my work in brain imaging was inspired. I really need to
work in developmental psychology. There was a study done in children that
looked at imitation and self recognition. The way to do the study is the
following. First of all, how do you get the awareness that the face that you
see in the mirror is your own face. Is a nice, actually, question that, you
know, you can even ask, experimentally, in other species, not just in humans.
There is a simple test to actually test this awareness of self-recognition. It
is called the mirror test. Another mirror in this study.
So the way you do it is that with kids, when the kid is sleeping or when he's
not paying attention, you put a little mark on the forehead of the kid. And
sooner or later the kid is going to be in front of mirror. And what you're
going to see is if the kid is aware that that face is his own face or her own
face and sees the mark for the first time, he directs his attention and his
fingers to the mark. This experiment was done initially in chimpanzees. And
in chimpanzees, they demonstrated that they are actually able to recognize
their own face through a mirror.
And kids are able to do that relatively late in development, toward the end of
the seven (phonetic) year life. You probably have seen babies and infants
looking at themselves in the mirror, when they are much younger, even before
the first year of life. But if you do the mirror test on those kids, they are
not going to show any mark directed behavior. That means probably what they
see, it is something very entertaining for them, but they don't have the
concept that that face is their own face.
But toward the seven year life, they actually achieve this feat, which is an
important one, to create a sense of self. There was a study that shows that if
you pair kids, if you put them, you know, diodes (phonetic) of kids. Two kids
in one room and two other kids in another room, and you put together the kids
that are able to pass this test already at a good sense of self. They also
imitate each other much more. If you pay -- if you put them in the same room,
two kids that do not have this sense of self, they imitate each other much
less.
So this (inaudible) maybe what these cells do is not just getting into the
minds of others, but through this reciprocal relations between self and other
(inaudible) so helping us building a sense of self.
So we did an experiment, which we were more (inaudible) in the face of our
subjects with other faces. And we looked at the ability of these subjects to
recognize their own face or the face of other people. So these, really, the
subject were looking at pictures that were kind of a blend of their own face
and the face of others.
And there were different percentages of self and percentages of others. And
what we were able to track down was that in fact, the (inaudible), the same
(inaudible) that we think contain mirror neurons were much more active when
subject were able to recognize themselves.
We also did a PMS (phonetic) study which we, what we did was stimulate these
brain engines. And the prediction was if these are really relevant to this
behavior, then there should be a decreased performance in the ability to
recognize your own face in a morphed (phonetic) face. And we demonstrated
that. So it really seems that these neurons are really not just for others but
also for (inaudible) self, sense of self.
And I really think that, you know, this tells us that self and other are just
two sides of the same coin, and itself is really a social construct and not
something that is tracking ourself and unable to reach toward others.
So really this system tells us that we have this ability to mirror other people
automatically. We can easily understand the actions that they are making. The
intentions associated with those actions, the emotions that are associated with
body expressions that we make. So it really makes us wired for empathy but
also helps us creating a sense of self.
But then what happens, when you have a dysfunctional system. One of the
dichotomies we had was that there may be broken mirrors and there may be
hypofunctioning of this system.
Some -- a group said, made some hypothesis early on, and we actually did
experiments that use the same kind of paradigms, imitating and observing facial
expressions. Our kids were in the scanner (phonetic), and we had a group of
(inaudible) kids and a group of kids that belonged to the (inaudible) spectrum
disorder. And one thing we noticed right away is that the activations in the
two groups differ dramatically in these (inaudible) which are the mirror neuron
(inaudible) in the (inaudible) group.
so the (inaudible) developing kids activated these areas, and the kids
with (inaudible) did not. We make a direct comparison between the two groups.
The reliable difference in brain activity is exactly these (inaudible) so in
the mirror neurons in the front of it.
Most importantly what we also found was that the activity in these areas, in
the group of patients with (inaudible) was correlated with the severity of the
disease. We had some measures of severity of disease. Some, you know, widely
used scales. The ADI (phonetic) in the adults, and there was a correlation
such that the more reduced activity in mirror neurons, the more severe is the
disorder.
And people are really picking up this concept and really making interventions
that are based on imitation. And Sally Rogers is really the one you see
(inaudible) is really leading this field. They are doing this imitation
intervention relatively simple. You can actually teach the parents to do those
interventions. They are really not based on the fact that you tell the
children, well, you know, look at me and do what I do. It is much more kind of
very warm social interaction. Often with the therapies that is to first
imitate what the children are doing. And then in this way the child really
gets engaged, and they start leading and, the child, and they start doing
intervention in these children.
I gave a lecture some years ago, in the Bay Area for a while, all these
foundation. And it was really based only on neuroscience. But the (inaudible)
therapists. And at some point, one guy -- well, one guy, already off the stage
came to me and told me, you know what? What you say makes a lot of sense to
me. I work with really impaired patients. And some times, some days these
patients, it is impossible to do anything. They seem to be -- they don't even
see me. In my last resort, when I really have no other way of trying to work
with them, I start imitating the (inaudible) movements they make. When I start
doing that, they suddenly see me and they immediately interact with me.
And there was a video that a French scholar sent me a long time ago in which
you can really see this thing dramatically. There is a patient, a child with
all this, in a room with moderate stereotype, is flapping the hands. And
another kid comes in, not even a therapist (inaudible). And she is playful,
and they are -- you know, she is this French scientist that studies imitation
(inaudible). She has all these rooms set up, you know, where there is always
two copies of the same toy or object. So the kids that come in stop playing
with the child with all this, and start interacting with him. And she offers
him a cowboy hat, and she puts sunglasses on and offers the sunglasses to the
other kid. The other kid start imitating what she does. You can see the
stereotypes movements of these kids immediately disappear. It is almost magic.
Then the other kid left, leaves the room. And the child with learning stays in
the room, and within 30 seconds the (inaudible) movements come back again in
the child without this. So there is really something powerful about imitation
and the ability to really create the social group.
And again, Sally Rogers really (inaudible) exploring this concept in order to
use intervention that are based on imitation.
And what she told me was that they not only get better in the social domain
you, but they seem to get better even in the language domain. So there seems
to be, you know, an improvement across the board.
but she was very excited about that.
They are very preliminary,
So let me actually try to wrap it up, and I really (inaudible) going to ask me
questions about this research. I think that, you know, to explain (inaudible)
exciting things about this research. I think that the message that we are
getting out of our lab experiments is that evolution selected these sets really
to facilitate social interactions. And these sets are really creating
relatively simple way of interacting with other people by really achieving the
depth of the minds of others.
These three saw what is called the problem of other minds in philosophy of
mind. Again, the idea was that how can I actually have access to the minds of
others if I can only access my own mind. Well, there are plenty of books
written on this. And mostly, in philosophy mind, the solution to the problem
is a very influential and complex one. And these cells seem to provide a
simulation approach to understanding the minds of others.
And again, I think that the most, one of the most important messages that this
really calls for a major revision of longstanding beliefs. We always talk
about, biologists (inaudible), just about self-preservation. Just about the
self and that we become social animals with our higher order ideas. This
research really tells that we are really wired for empathy. That we really
automatically attune to other people. And this, seems to me, it is a major
message. In fact, the more I think about it, you know, I think it is the other
way around. What divide us and our beliefs, both religious and political, I
think we should really try to think of the way we, evolution shaped us to
really try to be more in (inaudible) with other people.
And, yes, the thing that, what we are really being wired for involvement in
care. And what I, the final chapter of the book I call this neuroscience,
existential neuroscience, because (inaudible) essentially is associated with
dread and despair. The other one that I think is much more important, which is
associated with involvement and care, commitment to other people.
And I think that's what our brains are built for. Seems to be committed to
others, to be involved and to care.
And the final point I want to make is that, you know, all this stuff, it has
always been implicit. Okay? Societies are built on explicit discourses, not
on this implicit automatic mirroring. But I think the fact that we are now
aware that we have this very powerful mechanism in our own brain, we can
actually talk about it. We can reach the explicit level on which societies are
built. I think that we can actually use this message to really have a strong
impact on our society and make a better one.
All right.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Question: (Inaudible) colation between (inaudible) neurons had and
environment (inaudible) that's fine.
>> Marco Lacoboni: Great question. Which comes first is something that we
don't know. We have some hypothesis. I mean, one thing that we think
(inaudible) is this example. When it comes, for instance, to early
development, often people think that the babies always intimating the
care-giver, the adult, the mother, the father. But it is often the opposite.
The opposite is that adults imitate babies. And so in scenario I often give is
that baby smiles, mother smiles back. And the baby brain is very simple to
associate the mother (inaudible) smiling with the (inaudible) of somebody else
smiling. So you create mirror neurons, you can create mirror neurons with
these reciprocal imitation.
When it comes to learning though, the story becomes more complex because at
some point we have to conceive that in a way there may be mirror neurons even
before you are able to perform (inaudible) actions. We have some (inaudible)
in the monkey brain that -- monkeys do not use tools. And so the early studies
on mirror neurons have shown that in fact mirror neurons do not, the monkey -mirror neurons do not fire when the monkey sees a human grasping something with
a tool. But sadly some years ago, about 10 years into mirror neuron research,
some scientists found some cells, some mirror cells that fire for two-use
actions. So these are cells that fire when the monkey does something, but also
when the monkey sees a human using a tool to grasp that thing.
so it seems that it is possible, though it is hard to prove definitely, that
these cells actually acquire the visual property of firing to the sight of
somebody else using a tool. So in principle it is possible that the formation
of these cells precede the ability to actually use those tools. And they
actually really be important to learn.
>> Question: So this may be kind of related, but I wondered, is there any
research on cross control studies so some societies that are more
individualistic and some that are (inaudible).
>> Marco Lacoboni: Great question. We did one study that we published last
year, (inaudible) a lot of (inaudible) college. We studied, which we used
there was a community of Nicaraguans in L.A. that is very insulated. And so we
actually went into a full blown crossover study in which we had Americans and
Nicaraguans watching American gestures and Nicaraguan gestures made by American
actors and Nicaraguan actors, all counter-balancing across.
We couldn't do the whole, the full blown study because we actually couldn't
find any Nicaraguans that were not already exposed to American gestures. And
the kind of gestures we were using are called (inaudible) or hang loose. These
are stereotype gestures with very fixed meaning. But some of these gestures
have strong cultural significance. And of course this one was in the
Nicaraguan culture. And I couldn't even do the Nicaraguan gestures because I
really, this really stuff I never seen before. And I seen it when we were
doing the experiment. Now I completely forgot about it.
So we were studying the responses of these system in the human brains. When
American subjects only were watching, American gestures and Nicaraguan gestures
made by American actors and Nicaraguan actors. And we found two things. Of
course there was a stronger response in mirror neurons when the subject were
looking at American gestures. That makes sense. More familiar. It's part of
their culture.
We also added kind, very enticing finding. When the subjects were watching the
Nicaraguan guy, and they were -- they didn't even know it was Nicaraguan. They
were seeing just two guys with white shirt and jeans. Except that one was bald
and the other one was dark skinned, very dark hair. And the dark skin, dark
hair guys doing both the American gestures and these other things that, for
American subject, they are completely meaningless. But guess what? Their
mirror neurons were firing more when the Nicaraguan guy was doing the
Nicaraguan gestures than the American ones. They were almost kind of getting
that there was a more, better fluency in this guy, or a better kind of
resonance (phonetic) between the identity of the actor and the kind of emblem
(phonetic) they were looking at.
>> Question: Do you think, because you are familiar with that gesture, you
don't need to fire as many mirror neurons; whereas if there is a gesture you
don't understand, you are trying harder to understand ->> Marco Lacoboni: They were findings in the Nicaraguan actor (inaudible) but
across the board, we were looking at the American actor, there was much higher
activity for the American gestures. And overall there was (inaudible) higher
activity for the American gestures. So that finding can really be explained
with that.
>> Question: And have you looked, or has anyone looked into -- is there a way
to train yourself or a chemical to cause you to have higher levels of,
artificially higher levels of ->> Marco Lacoboni: Great question, too. One of the question that we have to
ask ourselves, what do we do this. Of course it tells us a lot about us and
how we interact with people. But can we actually change it and make it better.
It turns out training, even short training, changes the, one, the experiments
done with very simple actions. But it really changes the way these neurons, or
these neural systems respond to different kinds of actions. We have evidence,
just being exposed visually to certain actions, activates these cells more in
the human brain. If you actually, for instance, over classical finding is that
of course you fire more when you make an action, say, opening your hand and you
see somebody else opening their hand.
But what if I train myself to open my hand every time I see you closing your
hand. 20 minutes of this training really changes entire response of this
system. So you can actually train the system.
>> Question: Is it possible to reduce complexity of the study by, say, simpler
brains than (inaudible) monkey brains? Can you find the mirror neurons in
simpler brains?
>> Marco Lacoboni: Well, I mean, we are finding most (inaudible) in the monkey
brain. Of course my hypothesis is in the human brain there are many more of
these cells and probably much more complex part of this. For instance, we have
a finding that we have not published yet. The paper is under review, in which
we are using really rare (inaudible) opportunity. There are patients with
epilepsy that they need to be operated. And in order to exact where is the
focus of that epilepsy, the surgeon needs to do two things. First of all to
implant electrodes in the depth of the brain of these patients, and second of
all to remove the drugs that control the epilepsy. Because by doing that, at
some point the patient is going to seize. And when the electrodes are
implanted, the beginning of the seizure, the surgeon knows exactly where is the
starting point of the disease and he can remove all of that piece of brain.
Doesn't actually have to make a big resection.
Well, during these days in which the patients are implanted with electrodes, we
can do experiments on them if they allow us to do it, and they have invariably
do. And what we have found was in fact that (inaudible) mirror neurons, in
fact when they showed you that picture, they said that's -- the idea is that we
have desires in mirror self, but it may be that we have to revise it because
that's, you know, the nature of science. Data make you change your mind.
And in fact we have evidence that there are many more (inaudible) of mirror
neurons in the human brain. We also have evidence that some of these cell fire
in opposite ways. So for instance, they fire -- they increase the firing when
the patient makes the action, but they decrease the firing, they shut
themselves completely when the patient observes the action. This has never
been seen in the monkey. I think these cells can do two things. First of all,
they control your tendency to imitate other people because, otherwise, you will
be imitating all the time. But the other one which, just the fire one cell,
they can easily makes a differentiation between self and other.
So I think that the human brain, we are going to find many more types of neuron
cells and much more complex properties. But to go back to your question, well,
there is evidence that, for instance, in the birds that learn how to sing a
song (inaudible) for birds, songbird learning. There are cells that fire when
the bird is singing and when the bird is listening to the song. These are
cells that are located more research (inaudible) because you can make a legion
there. The bird doesn't sing anymore. That seems to be mirror neurons for
auditory stimuli and for learning how to sing a song. So if my hunch is
correct, the way you create these cells is by just simple association between
what you do and what other people do or other individuals.
Association learning is one of the most common mechanism in the brains of all
sorts of species. So in principle you can conceive that many more species have
the capability to have mirror cells.
>> Question: Have you seen any possible connections between this and the work
of (inaudible) facial expressions.
>> Marco Lacoboni: Oh, yes, it has shown we are really good at getting the
emotion, even quick changes of emotions of others very quickly. How do we do
that? I mean, if you are to go into these very complex and laborious
(inaudible) process, there is no way in 150 milliseconds, you can actually
detect changes in the facial configuration of other people. But if you are
riding your (inaudible) same cell that made the action and also activated by
the sight of somebody else making the action, you should (inaudible) bunch of
intermediate steps. So it explains the rapidity and (inaudible) in which we
are able to recognize and detect facial changes in other people.
>> Question: (Inaudible) a different example. Sounds and (inaudible) stimuli
and (inaudible) language learning and (inaudible). I was wondering, as an
adult, is there (inaudible) attitude (inaudible) descriptions of action that
(inaudible). Have there been any experiments done with children (inaudible)
which somebody feels like, if I learn as much by the time a (inaudible) as the
actual word (inaudible) more about how (inaudible) the script meaning of the
words. Has there been experiments which look at that by using (inaudible)
rendition (inaudible) language.
>> Marco Lacoboni: Yeah, I don't think there has been done any imaging study.
But as far as I know, there are studies that show in fact you want to add much
more prosodic. I mean, the way we talk to babies is to using, you know, a part
coo, which is a famous researcher in (inaudible) Seattle. She calls, she calls
it (inaudible). The fact we actually tend to imitate the way babies talk to
emphasize the prosody, the pitch of our language because it is not just the
meaning, the cold meaning, but all these other information is very important,
too, for communication.
>> Question: (Inaudible) people watching movies. So is there a difference
between, you know, being in the same room together, face-to-face, neurons and
people on the screens.
>> Marco Lacoboni: Yes, we are (inaudible). I mean, brain imaging is not the
friendliest techniques to do. Very ecological things (inaudible). But we have
done studies, very simple stimuli, with much more realistic stimuli. And one
thing you notice, is that the more realistic it becomes, the stronger is the
mirroring response.
In the monkey brain, when we started this international collaboration, there
was also a group of engineers that were part of the consortium. And they were
supposed to be a (inaudible) reality environments so that the monkey people
could really study single cell activity when they could really manipulate all
the various parameters of grasping something and so on. Well, it was a
complete failure. The monkey needs to see the person in order to have the cell
to fire.
(Inaudible) monitor doesn't activate the cells at all. Even if (inaudible)
environment doesn't activate the cells in the monkey. I mean, the humans can
activate the system even just by looking at the screen. But the more realistic
it is, the better it is. I mean, think that face-to-face interaction, being in
the same room is much more powerful than being detached or looking at the
people on the screen.
>> Kim Ricketts: Any further questions?
longer? We'll probably (inaudible) ->> Marco Lacoboni:
You are going to be here a little bit
Sure.
>> Kim Ricketts: -- have any other further questions or books to take out.
Thank you for coming.
>> Marco Lacoboni:
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.