I have read V S Ramachandran’s Phantoms in Brain book and found it quite interesting. This short talk was equally informative. He talks about our motor neurons imitating and empathizing.
A summary of what I understood is that there are certain motor neurons which are fired when we perform some activity. What is interesting is that, a subset of these neurons are fired when we look at someone else perform some activity too! And upon thinking, it seems quite an intuitive thing to happen. We learn by imitating people or animals around us, so it should be quite natural that when we see other do something our brain registers it by making a few of the motor neurons active. This is imitating.
However, a secondary phenomenon that he observed seems baffling. The scientists have found that neurons associated with sensation of touch get fired when we see someone else get touched!! For example, when we see John touching Doe on his arm, the neurons in our brain which would make us feel the touch had John touched our self, gets fired too. Now one might argue that he does not feel the touch even though the neurons are fired, and this might seem ridiculous. The answer lies in the fact that even though the neurons signal the brain that hand has been touched, a feedback from the hand itself vetoes the sensation. So our hands come in way of ours feeling other peoples’ touching each other on hands.
As a further evidence, he goes to say that people experiencing irritation in phantom limbs have found it comforting when someone else hand is stroked in the particular area. Now this is amazing. Also those people whose limb has been amputated can feel the touch sensation by looking at others touch each other because in their case their is no veto signal from the amputated limb.
I liked the concluding lines that he said – It is like we are all connected in a world where our neurons talk to each other. Wow! Reminds me of Star Wars and Avatar.
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