0.8 Making the cognitive turn in art history: a case study  (Page 10/17)

Research in neuroscience on mirror neurons in the primate brain offers ways of predicting the impact of the depiction of Mary’s bodily turn on the emotions of the reader-viewer. According to some neuroscientists, mirror neurons enable embodied simulation; that is, when humans perceive the actions, emotions, or sensations of others, mirror neurons throughout their bodies activate those same actions, emotions, or sensations, though not to the same degree. Thus one human internally mirrors another. These responses may remain below the level of consciousness, but they may also generate conscious feelings that result in empathetic engagement. For examples, see Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), as well as Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; originally published in Italian, 2006). Profiling V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego, in the New Yorker , John Colapinto writes, “Ramachandran has dubbed mirror neurons ‘Gandhi neurons’—because, he said, ‘they’re dissolving the barrier between you and me.’” John Colapinto, “Brain Games: The Marco Polo of Neuroscience” The New Yorker , May 11, 2009: 76-87, at 86. In this reading, Mary’s purposeful turning away would stimulate the sensation of turning in the reader-viewer’s body, and this in turn would encourage identification with the emotions that motivated her movement—that is, empathy. These “embodied mechanisms of cognition” allow us to ascribe mental states to the actions of others; they facilitate empathy—here our empathy with Mary, whose action creates a space around her body that repels the suitor’s touch. Naomi Rokotnitz, “It is required / You do awake your faith”: Learning to Trust the Body through Performing The Winter’s Tale ” in Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn , edited by Bruce McConachie and F. Elizabeth Hart (New York: Routledge, 2006), 122-46, at 135. Rokotnitz offers an insightful application of the mirror neuron hypothesis. Other neuroscientists, however, point to the limited nature of findings based on experiments to date. Christian Keysers, for example, concludes that there is research evidence to show that some neurons involved in performing an action are indeed selectively activated by seeing a similar action—in other words, “mirror neurons do exist somewhere in the human brain.” Christian Keysers, “Mirror Neurons.” Current Biology 19, no. 21 (2009): R971-73, at R971. See also Gregory Hickok, “Eight Problems for the Mirror Neuron Theory of Action Understanding in Monkeys and Humans.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 21.7 (2008): 1229-1243. I am very grateful to Aniruddh Patel for calling this critique to my attention and for sending me copies of these articles. Our ongoing discussion of these and related issues exemplifies well how much emerging disciplines can benefit from interaction with one another. But he is cautious about their link to empathy: “Activations in brain regions involved in executing actions have been measured while people try to read the minds of others, empathize with them or listen to spoken language. Examining how much of that activity really stems from mirror neurons, and in particular to what extent there is a causal link between this activity and these mental functions is a key challenge for future research.” Keysers, R972. Thus, the process in the mind-body by which the reader-viewer might feel empathy for Mary in this miniature has not yet been precisely discovered, but the mirror neuron hypothesis points towards embodied mechanisms of cognition.