REFLECTIONS IN THE MIND

Nov. 2007

 

In the months before my surgery several months ago, I intuitively prepared by drawing people to me whom I felt were positive thinking and avoided those who seemed more negative about their own lives. I wanted to be surrounded by those who enhanced my life and offered intimacy and closeness. I knew this would hasten my healing and soften the expectant pain that would follow the surgery. I then read about Daniel Goleman and the discovery of mirror neurons and it all made sense.

There is new research that links relationships and physical health. It indicates that people with rich personal networks recover more quickly from disease and live longer. The more important the relationship, the stronger the effect. If you are in a toxic relationship, this also has physical consequences.

For the first time in history, neuroscientists are able to observe brain activity while we’re in the act of feeling. Daniel Goleman in his new book “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships,” states, “One person’s inner state affects and drives the other person. We’re forming brain-to-brain bridges-a two-way traffic system. We actually catch each other’s emotions like a cold.”

The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of macaques and by extension their implications for human brain evolution is one of the most important findings of neuroscience in the last decade.

Simply put, and explained by Giacomo Rizzolatti, a mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal performs an action and when the animal observes the same action performed by another animal. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were him/herself performing the action.

Mirror neurons track the emotional flow, movement and intentions of the person we are with and replicate this state in our own brain by activating the same areas in our brain as in the other person. This attempts to explain emotional contagion and feelings of rapport, and seems to allow shifts in physiology. John T. Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago proposes “…the emotional status of our main relationships has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity. In short, my hostility bumps up your blood pressure, your nurturing love lowers mine.”

While there is no solid data showing a medically significant effect from the intermingling of physiologies, there is no doubt that a healing presence can relieve emotional suffering. James A. Coan reported last year in an article in Psychophysiology, about a case of a woman waiting for an electric shock while undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging study. While alone, she experienced heightened anxiety, and when a stranger held her hand as she waited she experienced little relief. When her husband held her hand, she felt calm and her brain circuitry quieted.
 

Perhaps this explains why being present for people needing healing assists in the process and why those with chronic illnesses who are abandoned and rejected by significant people spiral into lonely isolation, bearing their pain alone. Social rejection activates the zones of the brain that generate the sting of physical pain.

Goleman furthers the thinking that positive interactions can boost the

immune system. We can have an impact on suffering “if we stop treating

people as objects or as functionaries who are there to give us something.”

We need to be treating people with more respect. “Empathy,” writes

Goleman, “is the prime inhibitor of human cruelty.”

Being aware and conscious of this process might be of greater importance

at this time of our lives. As we age, we watch our own physical imbalances,

losses and vulnerabilities, as well as those of friends and families increase

and expand. Given that health care is not offering empathy and empower-

ment, it becomes the role of friends and family to offer more positive

interactions. The good news is our brains never stop evolving (we

manufacture 10,000 brain cells a day) so we still have time to develop

richer human connections.