The Empathic Brain

A fellow blogger was talking about the problems faced by many highly educated working young ladies in Hongkong approaching 30 or even above in finding the love of their lives. This prompted me to take a look again at human emotions. So I picked up my copy of Richard Restak's the Naked Brain and turned to the chapter "The Empathic Brain: The Boundaries between Self and Others." The following is what I found. 

Restak started by recounting an interesting experiment involving the kind of mistakes we can make in how we "feel" about what is and is not part of our physical "self" . A man sits with his right hand resting on his lap whilst there is another life-like rubber right hand on top of a table,  aligned exactly in a position AS IF it were his real right hand, which itself is on his lap below that table top and therefore hidden from his view. Then both his real and rubber hands are each simultaneously stroked by a small paint brush whilst his brain waves are measured by an fMRI. After about 11 seconds, the man begins to "feel" as if the stroking sensation were originating from the rubber hand instead of from his real right hand! When the man is told "Point to you right hand", the man points with his left hand to the rubber right hand instead of the real right hand. Then the experimenter takes out a hammer and makes as if he is going to hit the rubber right hand. The man flinches, and makes a mental effort to move his rubber right hand away but is surprised that he can't. Henrik Ehrsson, who conducted the experiment states: "The study shows that the brain distinguishes the self from the non-self by comparing information from the different senses. ...You could argue that the bodily self is an illusion being constructed in the brain." In this experiment, what is seen has priority in our consciousness over what is felt and it shows that the mind's subjective "perception" of the sense of "ownership" (sense of self) of the hand has shifted from that of the real hand to the rubber hand. The result is that the rubber hand is "felt" as part of the body. This proves that "self-attribution depends on a match between the look and feel of the body part.", says Ehrsson. Once this association is formed, the "illusion" persists. Therefore though the man "knows" that the rubber hand is not really his, he will still "behaves" as if it were part of him ( his wanting to lift the rubber hand in his brain when he sees the hammer coming down on it and his left hand pointing to it when he heard the order to point to his right hand). The fMRI shows that this kind of action involves the activation of the pre-motor cortex of the "hand-centred cells" which is the physiological location of the "feeling of ownership" of the rubber hand.

Restak suggests that empathy involves a similar blurring of the boundary between the self and the non-self or the boundary between self and others. Empathy involves "feeling" or "experiencing" something that is happening to another "as if" you were experiencing it yourself. You need to establish an "imaginative" link between yourself and that other person. That's why we can empathize with another human being but not with say a chair. Animals are half like us. They can empathize with other animals in feeling the pain experienced by other animals but not so completely as in man but dog owners would probably disagree. But we can emphathize with the other only if we ourselves had actually experienced a like experience of pain but at an earlier point in our own lives.

In another experiment, a group of volunteers are asked to watch a man whose hands is strapped to a machine which they have been told would generate a painful heat (when this is white lie because it really doesn't). Some of them are told to merely observe the man's reaction. Others are asked to imagaine how the man is feeling. A third group is asked to imagine how they would feel if they were in the strapped man's position. Then periodically the actor will act as if he had actually received a painful heat attack. The experiment shows that people in the two latter groups show greater empathic responses, measured by palm sweating and blood vessel constriction and verbally (self-reports). But though they feel the empathic response, they never lose the sense of their own indiviudal self. Unlike in the rubber hand experiment, their sense of reality remains intact: the man "seen" to be receiving painful heat shocks is not perceived as identical to the observer himself.

In a third experiment,  a woman and her boyfriend are together in a room, she lying inside an fMRI machine while he sits besides the machine. Both the back of her hand and that of her boyfriend are hooked up to an electrode which can deliver either a weak or strong one-second electric shock at random. The woman can see her boyfriend's hand from inside the machine and there is in addition a computer screen from which she can see whose hand will be zapped and how intense that zap is likely to be. The results show that when the woman got the electric shock, the fMRI shows activity across a wide swarth of her brain including both the somatosensory cortex (responsible for our touch sensation) and also the areas responsible for the emotional experience of pain. When her lover got shocked, her somatosensory cortex remains inactive but her emotional centre light up like bonfires on a night beach. 16 couples went through the same experiment. The higher the woman's score on the standard questionaires gauging empathy, the greater the activity in the emotional area of her brain. But what if a sadist were to undergo the same experiment? Would her emotional centre also light up? But if so, empathy does not necessarily lead to positive consequences. Empathy involves getting into the mind and feelings of another person but you can put that information into either good or evil uses. A security service interrogator told Restak: "You have to know exactly when to shout, when to speak loudly, when to speak quietly and when not to speak at all and just sit and look at him for hours if necessary. I have a thousand different systems for a thousand detainees.". He certainly has good empathic instincts.

We can often read a person's emotions from tiny hints from his facial expression (his eyes, his eyebrows, his lips, his nostrils, his paleness, his flush and the particular configuration of his 108 facial muscles, the maximum amongst all primates), his body posture, the intonation of his voice, the speed of his words etc. Autistic people lack this ability entirely and skilled negotiators and poker players rely upon them for their successes and artists depend on them for revealing the "soul" of their characters. When a painter paints, he does not just paint what he sees. In Iris Murdoch's novel, The Sandcastle, the artist Rain Carter says, "Perhaps we feel our own face, as a three-dimensional mass, from within--and when we try in a painting to realize that another face is, we come back to the experience of our own.". In fact, we have a special part in our brain specially reserved for recognizing human faces, called fusiform face area (FFA), located on the underside of the the temporal lobe. If the FFA is damaged, we may fail to recognize other faces. Twin studies of babies carried by T A Polk at the U of Michigan show that facial recognition of identical twins looked alike whilst the brain maps of fraternal twins differed as if we were testing two non-twin brothers and sisters. Polk says: "Heredity plays a significant role in the pattern of cortical activity associated with face recognition.People are innately wired for the recognition of faces, perhaps because of the ability to recognize faces is crucial to survival." According to Restak, on average most of us will remember up to 10,000 faces and can identify 90% of their classmates 35 years after leaving high school.

Our facial recognition ability resides principally in the right brain hemisphere. This is confirmed by a clever experiment done by Julian P Keenan. She showed a woman a picture of herself and then through computer technology, gradually morphed her face with that of Marilyn Monroe so that the resulting picture is a mix of her own with other features of the movie star and then anesthetized her right brain by an injection into the artery serving the right hemisphere. She failed to identify any of her own features. But if her left hemisphere were anesthesized, she was able to identify her own features in the morphed picture. In another experiment the picture of Marilyn Monroe was gradually morphed into that of Margaret Thatcher. A picture consisting 60% Marilyn Monroe and 40% Maragaret Thatcher was identified by the subjects as an older version of Marilyn Monroe whereas a 40% Marilyn and 60% Margaret was seen as a sexier version of the former British British Prime Minister and as the morphing proceeded, there was a sudden flip and the older Marilyn was identified as Margaret and the sexier Margaret was identified as Marilyn. It was found that three different brain areas were active in the decision making. The inferior occipital gyri (IOG) at the back of the brain is involved in analyzing separate physical features e.g. lines on the face, make-up etc and the right fusiform gyri (RFG) with comparing faces seen with memories of previous faces seen and finally, if the relevant face is recognizable, the anterior temporal cortex (ATC) which stores memories of specific people.  Thus damage to specific regions will result in different kinds of failures or deficits eg. if the ATC is damaged, we cannot link a name to a face and if the IOG is damaged, we will be unable to pick up important identifying characteristics such as wrinkles which indicate middle age and if the RFG is damaged, we may think that different faces belong to the same person.

Because we use the same brain region when we "perceive" a particular facial expression in others as that involved when we ourselves have the same facial expression, something called "emotional contagion" happens. Thus when we look at another's facial expression, we tend unconsciously to adopt the same expression on our own face. When we see others smile, our facial muscles will be unconsciously activated to smile back and we will actually experience a similar emotion or feeling of being happy. But this does not necessarily happen. If a stranger smiles at us under certain circumstances, we may inhibit our tendency to smile back because we may be activated by a fear response that our smile may be misunderstood. And even amongst friends, we may not smile back if we wish to indicate to our friends that we do not feel all that happy at that particular moment. But generally, emotions are infectious. We spontaneously respond to how other people feel. All of us to a greater or lesser extent resonate to the emotions of those around us. And some highly expressive people are able without having to say a single word of communicating a happy or unhappy mood to others. Sometimes negative moods will trigger similar negative moods in the recipients. To stop being affected, we would often prefer to avoid negative people, who from our experience we know will always harp on gloomy topics or go at length about some sad stories or other. We simply do not want to pick up their negative vibes. Technically,  these are called "negative counter transference". 

Another name for empathy, coined by the Scottish psychologist Colwyn Trevarthen, is the term "intersubjective sympathy" who finds that an infant will imitate the facial movement of its primary carer, usually its mother e.g opening his mouth, pursing his lips, protruding his tongue if he sees any of such movements by his carer.  Interestingly, such actions will often be repeated unconsciously by his carer as well. When feeding their babies, mothers often open their mouths, and in many cases, their mouth opening occurs even after the infant has already finished eating! In an experiment, a mother deliberately stops to respond to the baby's facial expression by adopting a "neutral" face during feeding. Instantly, the baby turns fussy and looks away. Restak says, "It is as if a delicate and complicated dance between mother and infant has been disrupted." Isn't this what sometimes happens between lovers, unofortunately? Hence the frequencies of "lovers' quarrels"!  The negative words and moods of one will quickly lead to negative words and behavior from the other and in no time, because lovers pay close attention to what each other do, what started out as a litle dispute over a mere trifle may escalate into a rupture of the relations which will take months to repair and sometimes a permanent break! On the other hand, lovers wish and often do resonate with each other's positive emotions. From birth, we are hardwired to resonate with other brains. What lovers do may often be a regression to the type of sweet and secure mimicking behavior subsisting between themselves and their principal carers. The kind of sweet nothingness lovers murmur into each others' ears is often notoriously childish!

According to Restak, "we tend to unconsciously mimic a wide range of behaviors such as other people's accents, tones of voice, rate of speech, mannerisms and even moods. Mimickly does not even have to require the other person's actual presence. We mimcik the expression of those we see on the televsion or movie screen. After a few days of exposure to a regional accent, most of us find ourselves taking on some of the qualities of the local dialect. Such unconscious mimickly serves a useful social purpose: it establishes a connection with the others, fosters empathy and serves as a compliment. In an intriquing experiment, people who had been mimicked proved more helpful and generous towards a wide range of people, not just the person mimicking them. All successful counsellors and therapist are excellent at mimicking their clients' mood. Carl Rogers is a master in this type of technique.  Tanya Chartrand says, "Like a chamelon that changes its colors to blend or fit in with the environment, people unwittingly change their mannerisms and behavior to blend and fit in with their social environment. Participants in our experiments even mimicked unlikeable people, indicating that even under minimal conditions in which there is no rapport, affiliation or liking, nonconscious behavioral mimickry will occur". The longer people have known each other, the more likely it is that mimickry will have a formative effect on their behavior. The more we like a person, the more we will mimick him or her. To find out the truth of her remarks, all we need to do is to observe the behavior of long married couples . The relations between lovers is therefore only a special case of mutual mimickry!