Behind the Scenes of The Brain Show

by Zeev Nitsan

  When two people identify with each other, their mental maps undergo a sort of virtual merger and integrate. A conscious merger takes place, which sometimes leads to the question, where do I start and where do you end?

  Failure in Seeing the Other’s Soul

  The pendulum of emotional identification with the other ranges from one end of complete defamiliarization—as was expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre, “Hell is other people”—to the other end of sweeping empathy—which puts the other’s needs ahead of our own, sometimes to the point of nullifying the self and subjecting it to the needs of the other in the spirit of ultimate service offered to Aladdin by the genie: “Your wish is my command.”

  The mirror cells enable us to create an emotional portrait of the other’s state of mind.

  The spectrum starts from a hawk’s view of the other’s soul, among those who have the skill of empathy, through various levels of impaired sight, such as soft autism among those who suffer from Asperger’s syndrome, to total blindness with regard to the other’s soul, which might exist among those who suffer from severe autism.

  In absence of “mindsight” skills, our life is deprived of a key skill. Our relations with others will be of an alienated nature, and we might adapt a worldview that sees other people as objects (“objectivation of the other”—perceiving the other as an object) that lack emotions. In extreme cases, we might see them as worthless objects and become “mindblind”—a disorder that psychopaths suffer from.

  Extreme difficulty with respect to mindsight of the other might lead to an infertile emotional dialogue between people; it does not rely on a common ground, similar to an argument between a person and a fish who are discussing whether it is more convenient to breath in water or on land.

  Researchers of emotions distinguish between two types of empathy: warm empathy, which derives from feelings and is based on the brain areas that are in charge of producing emotions (primarily the limbic system), and, on the other hand, cold empathy: the ability to hypothesize the other’s feelings by means of logic that does not involve any feelings. Psychopaths lack warm empathy, but they might be skilled in cold empathy, just as color-blind people are able to tell when the traffic light orders “Stop.”

  “The third eye”—which, according to various mystic theories, is in charge of mindsight of the other—matches, in terms of its traditional location in the forehead, the fact that mindsight skills are mostly produced in the frontal lobes. Damage to the frontal lobes severely impairs the ability to sense the other. In such a case, there is a retreat to an egocentric world in which the person, as an individual, feels as if he is the center of the universe.

  The inner monologues in our brain are silent to other people, and vice versa. A human brain, however, is equipped with skills for indirect inference, which is rich in terms of its insights regarding the inner monologue within the other’s brain. On the other hand, those who suffer from autism have difficulty in creating working assumptions regarding the monologues that take place in other people’s brains.

  One of the explanations for failures with regard to mindsight of the other among those who suffer from autism is that the intense inner monologue that takes place in their brain consumes all resources of attention. According to another hypothesis, they experience a constant flood of stimulations and find it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, some autists demonstrate performances that are better than the average in terms of tasks that involve mental dismantling of complex inanimate systems and understanding the interrelations between the components.

  The principles of game theory can be recognized in their inner-skull version. Often a zero-sum game takes place in the brain. In this game, focusing on one central processing task is performed at the expense of another processing task, which is ignored. Among those who suffer from various behavioral syndromes as a result of different wiring in their brain, the ordinary dynamic balance, which distributes attention and processing resources among the tasks routinely, is disrupted. Instead, there is a sort of dictatorship of a dominant functional system that regularly claims most of the processing resources. It might be that, in a similar pattern, among those who suffer from autism, one functional system takes control of the brain’s agenda and abolishes the role of the “reading-the-other” system—a sort of dyslexia or alexia to the other’s being. This is difficulty in reading to the point of a sweeping lack of ability to read the pages in the book of the other’s mind.

  “Mindsight of the other” requires attention resources. Whenever our attention resources are not focused on the other, there is a decrease in its function. One example is that when we walk in the streets of a busy city, we tend to introvert. A type of emotional barrier is created between us and the people around us. A sort of virtual glass, which is almost impenetrable, separates us from the ones around us. It is usually referred to as the “urban trance.” The emotional echoing that a homeless person triggers among people walking nearby is sometimes vague and subdued, since our realty inputs undergo emotional inferiorization. We are at a state of depressed attention with respect to strangers around us and, therefore, tend to be “blind” to their emotions.

  Unfortunately, our world is abundant in human suffering—every human being has an intimate correspondence with the suffering experience. Emotional wear that might affect people who are at the forefront facing human suffering, such as people who work at a hospice that treats terminal patients, might thin out their emotional resources and impair their function. They might be affected with “empathy failure” (a familiar term related to it is “compassion fatigue”) and suffer from continuous depression if they do not take action to preserve their personal emotional reserves.

  Though it is not a heuristic rule, and each brain owner has unique advantages, there is a common hypothesis according to which the tendency of the average male brain is to deal more with abstract, “emotion-free” systems; it is inferior to the average female brain with respect to analyzing emotional maps and reading the emotions of others. If we make a generalization, knowing that generalizations have built-in failures in terms of their application to specific people, we might say that the phenotype of the average male brain is inferior to the phenotype of the average female brain in terms of empathy skills.

  Feeling Felt

  The sense that the other uses mindsight skills while interacting with us is at the basis of the sense of “feeling felt.” This is the sense that the echoes echoing in the cave of your skull create vibrations within the skull of the other as well.

  The impact of our presence on the other is reflected in the other’s looks and body language, like a ball bouncing from the walls of a billiard table. The lion’s share of our self-image derives from the walls of the social billiard table.

  We express a unique behavioral repertoire in the presence of different people.

  A similar physiological state that takes place between us and the other at a given moment makes it easier for us to sense the other’s emotions, and vice versa—a person who is satiated will have difficulties understanding the one who is hungry. Physiological compatibility increases the chance of mental and emotional compatibility.

  Emotional compatibility between therapist and patient in therapeutic professions is a central layer with respect to the success of long-term therapy.

  Emotional synchronization and minimization of the psychological distance between us and the addressee of the message intensify the impact of the message.

  A human skill that is usually referred to as “emphatic accuracy” exists beyond basic identification with the emotions of the other (which is primarily mediated by “mirror neurons” at the subconscious level), and it allows cognitive understanding of the other’s emotions. It is valuable in terms of predicting the intentions of the other. This skill is expressed in senior spouses who excel at decoding one another.

  An elephant with silky skin – refinement of the built-in roughness of our interaction with the world is a high-leve
l social skill. In order to create strong identification with the other, we must skip the “egocentric subject barrier” and rely on our natural ability to sense the other’s senses within us, and translate this “mind reading” into gestures of generosity and emphatic “emotional climate” that is likely to create a spring-like emotional atmosphere at our work place, at home, etc.

  The Truth? The Whole Truth? Nothing but the Truth?

  Not speaking the truth is built into our communication with the other. The negative reputation related to this pattern should be restricted by understanding that telling a lie is context-dependent; it should not be considered as a negative thing just because it is a lie (we are all familiar with the term “white lies,” which originate in good intentions and are usually intended to improve someone’s mood or feelings). According to studies, if we were Pinocchio our nose would become longer between two to three times during each ten minutes of conversation. Studies suggest (taking into account the stigmatization trap that is part of sweeping claims) that women tend to lie more in order to improve the feeling of the other, while men do it to improve their own feeling.

  When telling a lie, we tend not to use first person, emotionally charged words, whereas we sometimes provide superfluous details.

  The skills related to lying and, at the other end, the ability to detect a lie told by another person are woven in the loom of evolution and wired in our brain as innate skills that are shaped in the light of the culture in which we live.

  Thus, for instance, with respect to the “voice of truth,” irregularity in the shades of the voice, its intonation or its rhythm—called dysprosody—is a vocal aspect we are highly sensitive to. Experts think that a telephone conversation is an inter-brain interface that allows us to sense when someone is not telling the truth (which is, in most cases, in correlation with dysprosody) more accurately than a face-to face conversation does, since most of us are more skilled in maneuvering our facial expressions and body language than we are in maneuvering our voice.

  People who suffer from Parkinson’s disease sometimes have difficulty in detecting prosodic clues (the tone of voice, the music of words) in other people’s speech and, sometimes, also in inferring other people’s emotions from their facial expression. Thus, they are more prone to err when assessing other people’s intentions.

  Lies are routinely woven into the texture of our social life, but they are not made of one piece. While some lies improve the durability of the social fabric that is being woven (such as white lies that are intended to minimize insult), others unweave the fabric.

  It was found that men and women lie with similar frequency, but, as aforementioned, women tend not to tell the truth in order not to hurt other people, while men tend to make their nose longer in order to improve their own inner feeling. This is a generalization, with all it entails.

  The pitted road of not telling the truth might turn into a slippery slope when new lies are often “required” in order to cover old lies that have already been told. Numerous energy resources are required in order to weave a lie, and a person who tends to lie frequently might enter a state of prolonged energetic deficiency. It is not that rare that the threads that weave the lie entangle into a ball that cannot be disentangled.

  Important Brain Structures in the Cycle of Social Functioning

  When we interact with the people around us, the abilities of synchronizing interaction, showing empathy, emotional accuracy, combining rationalistic dimensions in seeing the other, etc., are the criteria of social intelligence, which is a group of skills based on areas of the social brain.

  In most cases, the more complex a thinking task is, the more scattered the involved nerves networks are.

  The core cycles of the “social brain” (a functional definition from which an anatomic definition derives) are mostly the limbic system, the frontal lobes, brainstem structures and the cerebellum, which has an important role in the neural infrastructure at the basis of the ability to focus our attention, which is necessary for proper social functioning.

  The mindsight glasses are mostly contributed from the front part of the brain. The mental representation of the other materializes mostly in the prefrontal cortex. The nonemotional layer of moral and ethical judgment is mostly contributed from the activity of the frontal lobes. Thus, the maturity of this brain area is at the basis of social maturity. The maturity of the frontal lobes does not take place at a specific magic age but, rather, during “age areas,” and there is certain variance that reflects the individual brain. This maturity is the result of a graded process and, at any stage of the process, the question is related to quantity (what is the level of maturation?) and not to quality—of the dichotomous type of full maturation versus lack of maturation. The brain area called the amygdala is the main generator of tantrums—streams of emotions that erupt like geysers (a common expression of them is uncontrollable anger). When its function is more moderated, it is like a plate of colors that pours shades of emotions into the mental drawing of the experience.

  Various studies show cases of functional impairment at the channels of the cingulate gyrus (a brain area in charge of contributing to outlining links between our consciousness and the emotional aspects of the experience), which is in correlation with a disorder that is characterized by poor, “flat” emotional expression (called alexithymia by mental health professionals), which, metaphorically, “pecks the eyes of emotions.”

  Unconscious synchronization, which is nonverbal, such as the complex choreography of body language that takes place during a conversation, depends on the activity of areas at the brainstem, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum.

  Chief ingredients of the potion that induces altruistic “trips” (focusing on the needs of other person) are oxytocin—the “female” socialization hormone—and vasopressin—the “male” socialization hormone.

  A look is like a wireless connection between brains, similar to personal computers that create an interface between them without any physical connection. Eye contact—the visual input that is mediated through the eyes when we are in the midst of a dialogue with another person—actually connects the areas of the cortex above the eye sockets (which are called the orbito-frontal areas) that are in charge of producing information during face-to-face interaction. In this sense, the eyes are the window to our soul.

  Paths of Trust and Doubt

  Brain-imaging studies suggest that a central area in which the brain processes information it perceives as false or doubtful is the front insula, which is related to perceiving aversion and rejection, mostly with respect to smells and flavors. This can explain the saying “It does not smell good” with respect to lies.

  The neural activation pattern that is correlated to the difficulty related to deciding whether a certain sentence is true is stimulation of the cingulate cortex, which is in charge of settling conflicts.

  The ventral prefrontal cortex is a main brain area with respect to mediating between the output from brain areas that are in charge of factual-rationalistic assessment and the output produced by areas in charge of intuitive-emotional assessment. In other words, the prefrontal cortex is the place where the contents of the unconscious brain are being consciously doubted.

  Emotional stimulations are mostly processed at the amygdala, from which the processed input is transferred as output to the hypothalamus (the bean-sized brain area located at the ventral area), which regulates physical reactions of various organs, and to the cortex—for more complex processing of the stimulation.

  The brain area called “island” (Insula), which is hidden at the bottom of the lateral brain channel, processes sensory stimulations that are perceived as causing aversion and rejection.

  Triggering the area of the insula might result in laconic, impulsive behavior of the type favored by comics artists due to its aphorismic nature, reflected in expressions such as “Yuck” and “Gross.”

  In a study during which subjects were asked to decide whether a certain statemen
t was true or false, it was found that the classification of statements as true was made more quickly (which supports the philosopher Spinoza’s claim that we tend to believe first, and start doubting our beliefs at a later stage).[51] Functional brain imaging studies show that the initial sense of trust is characterized by intensified activity at the prefrontal cortex, whereas the sense of doubt is characterized by intensified activity at the area of the amygdala.

  Above the Eyes and Straight to the Heart

  The cortex above the eye sockets (the orbitofrontal cortex) is also an important interface point between the courses of the upper pathways and the courses of the lower pathways. This area is the main evaluator of our social experiences (whether we had a really good time or, alternately, felt deep distress in a certain type of social interaction), and it is, in fact, the mint that coins hedonistic value currencies to our experiences. In the stock exchange where the value of different elements is determined according to their ability to please us, a place of honor is saved for the neural circuit of the cortex located above our eyes. These circuits are in charge of labeling our social world according to a scale of “hedonistic value,” determining whose company we enjoy, and vice versa. The potential for the development of a romantic kiss is mostly determined in that area.

  Personal and Interpersonal Synchronization

  Synchronization of energies means matching the levels of energy among the people who interact. This synchronization increases the success chance of the inter-personal interface.

  Synchronization during interaction between people is created by means of neural systems that are called “fluctuation generators.” These systems determine the frequency of the “shooting rhythm” of information transmission among neurons and adapt it to the frequency of the perceived signal. These built-in pacers create the interface of our rhythm with the world and the people around us. They also create compatibility between various expression elements in our body and match, for instance, our body movement to the tone of speech.