The ability to infer what another person is thinking is an essential tool for social interaction and is known by neuroscientists as “Theory of Mind” (ToM), but how does the brain actually allow us to do this?
We are able to rationally infer what someone knows, thinks, or intends, but we are also able to “slip into their shoes” and infer how they feel, and it seems that the brain processes these different types of information in different ways, as confirmed by a new report in the June 2010 issue of Elsevier’s Cortex.
More at Science Daily
As a worker in the field of autism services i have a little background with ToM. It is fascinatingly important to what makes us sociable, or at least what makes our sociability so effective. The ‘mirror neuron theory’, that autism is caused in part by a malfunctioning type of neuron that usually mimics the behaviour of other people we see, has recently been brought into question by a small study of high-functioning auties.
http://bit.ly/9NVu3z – a link to the New Scientist article. Very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test – a link to a wiki article about the Sally-Anne test which is used to establish whether Theory of Mind has ‘failed’ or not.
Now I shall read the original article and find that my links and comment are irrelevant. he he he.
To me it makes more sense to separate theory of mind from empathy. So ToM becomes the ability to know how (not literally what) others think, whilst empathy becomes the ability to feel what others are feeling based on the universal emotions. Both of course are dependant on an ability to learn through imitation and one would expect to find mirror neurons in many areas of the brain. This would be broadly compatible with a system1 (intuition, emotional, instant response) / system2 (reflective, rational, cognitive) approach. It would also bring some subtlety to distinctions between mental distress/ disorder (capacities blocked by life experience and learning) and learning disabilities (a more absolute lack of capacity) and the many apparent mixes between the two.
Rob: Could’ve told them that — I have Aspergers, but when I see someone in pain on the TV, I wince and feel a ‘mirror pain’ just like other people seem to do.
Funny story: When I was a kid, I was fairly bad at judging other people’s feelings, unless they were blatantly crying or screaming. This led to some unfortunate situations, with teachers accusing me of ‘provoking’ them by continuing behavior they ‘clearly’ disliked and things like that.
When I was in my late teens, apparently my brain had picked up enough knowledge on behavioral cues that it started to internalize the recognition process — i.e., I now started to ‘have the feeling’ that someone was sad or angry or what have you.
This was so unfamiliar to me, that for a few years I fully and truly believed I was a ‘tele-empath’!
I don’t do empathy (the ability to feel what others feel). At least not very well, and not most of the time. I didn’t learn that basic human skill in early life, which most people acquire so un-self-consciously that they don’t even name it. It’s not a ‘learning disability’ – I have the capacity, it simply became blocked. Hence my adult life has been one long painful process of mechanically acquiring the skill. And I’m not fluent in it – others can see the joins, often become fearful of me, and turn away. (Doing one of Paul Ekman’s tests I correctly guessed only 3 out of the 8 universal emotional facial expressions – and that was with 30 seconds to think about it!)
does it have to do with mirror neurons?
I am a doctor. I was examining a patient who was paralysed down one side and was also avoiding that side of their body. They had been in care all their life. I noticed things did not add up and I managed to “un-block that patients mind” in front of me. At the end of the consultation the patient was no longer “paralysed”. This freaked me out big time and nearly got me into heaps of trouble. I have tried to scientifically rationalise what happened and have a theory. Should I live the rest of my life pretending this did not happen and protect my career or do something about it by way of research?
I did Simon Baron-Cohen’s Autism Quotient test and scored 28.
80% of people with Autism will score 32 or above, and the neurotypical average is 16. I read that many of the maths graduates at Cambridge also score highly on tests for autistic traits.
However, I have always been super-sensitive to the emotions of others. I think now that I am overcompensating by analysing every single tiny thing for emotional messages. I know now that I am actually not very good at emotion reading! I have always had difficulty with unspoken social rules (especially the little things) and even more so if i am excited or passionate about something. Probably quite a common profile for a bloke with my personality.
However, my ToM is very strong. Now that makes more sense, if they are separate processes…
In response to Duncan O’Niel, not trippy at all. Read Molecules of Emotion Candace Pert phd, I’m a therapist that work’s with various applications but at the end of it everything lies within the brain. The chemical responses of the brain are amazing and not everyone wants to accept this and maybe deny this but if accepted the limitations of that persons wellbeing is unlocked. Science does have the answers. Derren Brown yes know’s it’s all in the mind, but does he know the real reasons for why he can do what he does so well, mentalist maybe? Read the book, its all about chemical interaction peptides & atoms. Happy reading