Notes from the ADRC - Brain Science and Empathy

Our first lecture of the day was by bioengineer John Medina, author of: Brain Rules

I won't go on too much about the neuro-details because I would probably misrepresent them. Essentially, we have two major processes - the intrinsic (our internal experiences) and the extrinsic (what we express of that experience verbally and non-verbally. We cannot see the intrinsic experience of another person and are thus consigned to guessing based on the extrinsic cues. Unfortunately, we have many consistent but also consistently inaccurate patterns in guessing - imputing negative motives, assuming we are neutral and others are biased, assuming that our mistakes are circumstantial and others are based on inherent traits... etc.

The gap between intrinsic and extrinsic is one of the essential bases of conflict, and bridging these thus becomes of prime importance. In his words, " we are lost lonely wanderers inside our own skulls." Empathy and our understanding of it may be the door to opening this:


1. Empathy defined from a scientific perspective - it comes in parts:
a. The reaction phase - you have to be able to detect an affective reaction to another person's emotional state Autistic kids cannot reach this state and their inability to do so is a component of the autism diagnosis
b. The projection phase - Imaginative virtual transposition. Intellectual capacity to share another person's emotional perspective. You put the other person's emotional change as if donning clothing. Transforming extro into introspective information
c. the discrimination phase - This involves filtering your emotional reaction from those of the observed. We can distinguish where we begin and the other beings Sypmathy is where those boundaries break down.

The same regions that are stimulated when people experience "empathy" are those triggered by the Theory of Mind. What is the ToM? It's a phrase coined by researchers when they observed that of all social mammals the chimp seemed to be the only one whose alpha characters were not the physically fittest or strongest, but instead those they identified as those with a strong ability to (1) understand the rewards and punishment incentives in others' heads (2) understand the distinction between the rewards/punishment incentives in their heads versus those of others' and the ability to manipulate those unique incentives and rewards.

Neurologists have traced these to mirror neurons (although there is controversy over these). These are parts of the brain that are activated when we observe somebody else experiencing something. In a nutshell are changes in the brain that occur when we think of somebody doing something that are the same as if we were actually doing or experiencing that same thing ourselves.

Learning Empathy and Theory of Mind: People have varying levels of empathy and ToM, but it may be a skill that can be developed. There was a training at a local school attempting to enhance empathy in a fourth grade math class. Usually when somebody comes towards us with a strong emotion, we immediately react. The teachers were instructed to instead (1) attempt to identify the emotion being projected - "you look pissed off" and (2) guess what the stimulus was for that emotion - "and I think it's because of ___, did I get that right?" Incidentally to me this sounds  a lot like the active listening exercises we engage in during mediation trainings and the aim is fairly similar. Even though people can be wrong up to 50% of the time, they've accomplished two things by doing this. First they've shown that they care. Most people feel pretty isolated in their own brains most of the time. The fact that somebody is even attempting to understand, "lights up a sort of dopamine lollipop" in his words for most people. Secondly, the person will often respond and explain what the stimulus was, giving the observer higher accuracy for each subsequent display of emotion. The training resulted not only in reported bleed over effects into the teachers' personal lives, but also saw a raise in students' scores in the selected classes.

It was an extraordinarily dynamic lecture with all kinds of really nifty studies about fetal brain development and neurosurgery and other stuff I might reference later. But ultimately, I really wanted to highlight the empathy exercise, because it fascinates me. I've always thought as empathy as partially inherent, but also partially a choice. Funny to say this because I can be so hypersensitive to other people's emotional states that it feels more like an annoyance than any particular skill. It of course crosses the empathy line, but I think the research into mirror neurons does as well. Essentially we are observing one person's state but feeling it as our own in some regard. I can pick up immediately when I'm talking if somebody isn't following or isn't interested and it can sometimes fluster me entirely. If I've chosen an activity I enjoy for a group activity, I can't enjoy it if any one companion isn't enjoying it, regardless of how willingly she is putting up with it because she knows I enjoy it and thinks it should be a trade off.  In another regard it feels a lot like empathy is connected to a certain stability to "let go" in a zen sort of way. I feel like I can be more empathetic because I am confident enough in my ego state that I'm able to let go of it and quiet it and become a vessel - instead of allowing the other person's experience to sift through my intrinsic filters I allow their experience to come with their sensations, reactions, judgments and filters. That's not really well put, but to me it simply is a matter of stillness and suspension of self that allows a true understanding.

I'm not sure how that jives with the brain science findings about empathy... I guess I see some commonalities.