NEUROSCIENCE/2
THE NEW FRONTIER

I’ve Got You in Mind
Studies of the brain are influencing our ideas of responsibility and knowledge. How do we understand those around us? Does our nature tend toward self-sufficiency or relationships? We continue our neuroscience series with GIACOMO RIZZOLATTI, the discoverer of mirror neurons. He tells us about how we are made, and why we need others.

by Alessandra Stoppa

The discovery that introduced him into the history of science was born out of a crisis–“more than a crisis, a beating...” In the late 1980s, Giacomo Rizzolatti (born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1937) was in the United States for some conferences, and he found himself talking to Vernon Mountcastle, “one of the most famous neuroscientists in the world at that time.” Mountcastle did not spare him an embarrassing question: “What have you discovered lately?” He was studying vision. “In what animal?” “In the cat.” “I never read studies on cats. They’re irrelevant.”
“I could either get discouraged, or learn from it,” says Rizzolatti of that incident today. “I said to myself: ‘It’s true; cats are fine for studies about sleep, but for vision or cognitive problems, you need monkeys.’ I went back home and asked my director if he would agree to change animals. I was fortunate, because he helped me right away.” It was on this path, in fact, that Rizzolatti identified mirror neurons, which rank among the principal neuroscientific discoveries of the past two decades.
In the first installment of this series, we saw how to approach the intellectual challenge that the most promising frontier of science poses. Here, Rizzolatti–Director of the Department of Neurosciences at the University of Parma and member of the American National Academy of Sciences–highlights some aspects in which the study of the brain is revolutionizing the conception of man, focusing on “the idea of responsibility and, above all, the value of relationships–the data reveal that it is scientifically incorrect to consider the ‘I’ a monad. It’s an absurd idea, one that only leads to destruction.” He says that happiness requires an empathetic relationship with others, and he does so by citing Aldous Huxley and the unhappiness of people who live in the Brave New World, where “the idea of family is pornography; love and romantic relationships are obsolete, unnecessary. Marriage, birth, the parent-child relationship, and pregnancy are obscene things that are not to be mentioned in casual conversation.”

Dr. Rizzolatti, what are mirror neurons?
They are cells in the brain that become activated both when we carry out a given action, and when we see someone else carrying it out. They permit immediate understanding of the other’s action, and prepare our nervous system to imitate and to enter into empathy.

How did you discover them?
One almost always discovers what he was not looking for. That’s how it was for us. We were studying the organization of the motor cortex in monkeys, using a nontraditional approach. Usually, one studies animals in non-ethological conditions, having them act in a stereotypical way. We, instead, wanted to interact with the monkey in a free way in order to see its potentiality. The surprise was that the motor area is much more complicated than previously believed.

How so?
We discovered some fundamental characteristics of the neurons in that area. According to physiological tradition, they should only have codified movements, but we saw that most of them also codified the goal of the action. The neurons of the premotor areas become activated if I have to take an object with my right hand, left hand, or even mouth. They codify, therefore, the motor act, which is movement plus goal. This revelation was a great novelty, because it means that neurons “tell” us something “higher”–the goal is a philosophical concept. Moreover, many of the motor neurons also became activated at the presentation of objects–therefore, though they are located in a motor area, they respond to visual stimuli. The visual areas of the brain are in the back, in the occipital lobe, while the motor areas are in the frontal lobe, so they must communicate somehow. The study of neurons has told us that, when I see an object, I am automatically ready to take it. There is a visual-motor transformation; we go from the vision of the object to a motor plan for acting on that object. Technically, the nervous system prepares for an “affordance”–the way to grasp, which depends on the object. The object is for using; the use depends on how it is made.

And this led you to mirror neurons?
Yes, in studying the neurons that I just described, now known as “canonical” neurons, we found neurons that fired–that is, became activated–both when I grasp an object, and when you are the one who grasps it. Who acts? You or I? In the brain, there is a vocabulary of actions that are mine, but that “resound”–activate–when you do something similar.

What does this say about the method of knowledge?
Our discovery says that knowledge of others is empathetic. Some of our most recent data indicates that, not only do I understand the movement of the other, but I also comprehend his future intention. This is true of “cold” actions, like grasping an object. I also understand, however, so-called “hot” ones, like emotions. If the other suffers, I suffer. This data tells us, therefore, that comprehension is not just a process of reasoning. We also have an immediate, empathetic knowledge, for which what I see enters inside me–I participate in the other. As Marc Jeannerod of the University of Lyons says, “After the discovery of mirror neurons, the motor system is no longer for ‘doing things,’ but is a means of communication. It starts from me and goes toward you, and you can respond. It is a communicative system, because your nervous system enters into resonance with mine. It evokes in me something that I have inside, and that I recognize.”

So this aspect of the study of the brain tells us that the “I” is not a monad?
The monad idea is a completely erroneous conception, which can be traced back to the 1960s, when the mind was considered a computer, an elaborator of information that analyzes what the other says and responds in an appropriate way. But emotions, the body, and the relationship with the other were not considered. Our conception is the opposite: man is born with a formidable instrument, which is his empathetic capacity. It is a natural mechanism, to which social and cultural factors are successively added. We are a mixture of cultural and natural factors–I won’t say “genetic,” because today it’s easy to think that everything about us is genetically determined, but it’s not true; therefore, it’s better to say “natural.” I’ll give you an example: the love that I have for my mother is immense. She grows old, and I continue to love her. Then she gets sick, and I see her suffer. What do I do? Obviously, I suffer, too. But in order not to suffer anymore, I put her in a nursing home. I repeat, this is an example. But it’s to say that everything plays out in education, culture, and the conception that I have of myself and of her. In the name of that love, in fact, one can even come to eliminate the other, obviously in a “civil way”...

The other relevant hot-button topic, to which you alluded, is that of responsibility.
It’s fundamental, especially for legal implications. We all agree that, if we have a brain injury, we are not considered responsible for what we do. Adrian Raine, of Philadelphia, studied the brains of impulsive assassins, demonstrating that they present an underdevelopment of the frontal areas, those that restrain or inhibit our “instinctive” behavior. Among other cases, he described that of a man in Oregon who ran over and killed a group of cyclists because he was in a hurry. So, the question is delicate: is the individual guilty or not? Is everything determined by the brain? And if the man isn’t guilty, what do we do? If we eliminate responsibility, then even the concept of prison as a possibility for rehabilitation would lose all meaning.

Can you say that you know human nature better?
What we discovered is that the nervous system determines positive attitudes, like empathy. To study the nervous system is not to reduce man to a robot, it is to enrich our capacity to know ourselves and our neighbors, and how to live together with others. Our data is in agreement with the experience that we live–and much less so, I think, with a certain ideology according to which only the individual counts. The push toward egotism today is evident, and the crisis comes from the fact that everything that is social has disintegrated in favor of individualism. The problem is that most intellectuals insist in this direction, on putting the person at the center–not in any  relationships, but as single individuals who must enjoy life as much as possible, in a freedom without limits. Instead, we have very strict limitations, within which freedom lives.

How does scientific data tell us this? 
By indicating the necessity of the relationship, of feelings. A mother cannot stop being a mother; she needs to have a relationship with her child. Biology is not everything, but culture has limits, too–the relationship is twofold. Culture cannot substitute itself for natural needs. We were made in a certain way. So not differentiating between the sexes is an error, too–one cannot negate the diversity. Here is a more basic example: we have the freedom to eat whatever we want, but glucose has to be monitored, because the blood sugar level needs to be around 70/80. If it gets too low, we go into shock; if it gets too high, we go into a coma. There is an affirmation by Hume that is the gospel for many scientists: “It is logically impossible to derive an ‘ought’ prescription from an ‘is’ description, or a value from a fact.” This leads to complete relativism. And I don’t believe that it’s right, because a biological fact (that 70/80 of the blood sugar level) tells us what the value is, too. This is true for blood as it is for freedom. I depend on how I am made; if I want to live, then I have to accept that. I am not only a soul, I am also a body, and the body has a fundamental role in our life.

Today it’s as if materialism were dominant, but at the same time there is the affirmation that culture can do everything.
The paradox lies here: the mentality of the majority of intellectuals is antireligious and, at the same time, spiritualistic. One thinks that culture can do everything, and so ends up ignoring the material, the reality of how we are made.

What do the neurosciences tell us about consciousness?
Nothing. Or better, much has been written about consciousness, but as someone well synthesized: nothing worth reading. It’s a mystery, a “hard” problem, that we do not know how to approach. Today, we are starting to do research on the brains of people in deep comas. There is a study in which, instead of the usual tests, an MRI was taken of a person in a coma who was asked to think about playing tennis: the motor areas of the brain of this man, totally paralyzed and taken for dead, became activated... Everything remains to be discovered. We can know how perception takes place, how we are able to understand others, but the great mystery remains: a piece of material that thinks about itself and the world.