Sad Brain, Happy Brain

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But empathy depends on more than an ability to mirror actions or sensations. It also requires what some cognitive neuroscientists call mentalizing, or a "theory of mind." Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading researcher in the study of autism, has identified the inability to generate a theory of mind as a central deficit in that illness. He has coined the term "mindblindness" to designate that problem. The corollary, "mindsightedness," requires healthy function in several areas of the brain. The processing and remembering of subtle language cues take place toward the ends of the temporal lobes. At the junction of the temporal and parietal lobes, the brain handles memory for events, moral judgment and biological motion (what we might call body language). And the prefrontal cortex handles many complex reasoning functions involved in feelings of empathy.

Not surprisingly, love also engages a whole lot of brain. Areas that are deeply involved include the insula, anterior cingulate, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens— in other words, parts of the brain that involve body and emotional perception, memory and reward. There is also an increase in neurotransmitter activity along circuits governing attachment and bonding, as well as reward (there's that word again). And there's scientific evidence that love really is blind; romantic love turns down or shuts off activity in the reasoning part of the brain and the amygdala. In the context of passion, the brain's judgment and fear centers are on leave. Love also shuts down the centers necessary to mentalize or sustain a theory of mind. Lovers stop differentiating you from me.

Faith is also being studied. Earlier this year the Annals of Neurology published an article by Sam Harris and colleagues exploring what happens in the brain when people are in the act of either believing or disbelieving. In an accompanying editorial, Oliver Sachs and Joy Hirsch underscored the significance of what the researchers found. Belief and disbelief activated different regions of the brain. But in the brain, all belief reactions looked the same, whether the stimulus was relatively neutral: an equation like (2+6)+8=16, or emotionally charged: "A Personal God exists, just as the Bible describes."

By putting a big religious idea next to a small math equation, some readers might think the researchers intend to glibly dismiss it. But a discovery about brain function does not imply a value judgment. And understanding the reality of the natural world—how the brain works—shouldn't muddle the big questions about human experience. It should help us answer them.

Miller is editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter. For more information on mental health from Harvard go to health.harvard.edu/newsweek.

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Posted By: crowley@bit7.net @ 09/22/2008 3:14:05 PM

Dr. Miller needs to re-watch "Duck Soup". Groucho Marx's mirror routine was not performed with his brother Chico. Harpo Marx performed the routine with Groucho. In later years, he performed it again on the I Love Lucy show iwith Lucille Ball.
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Posted By: puddytat @ 09/21/2008 2:49:36 AM

"Comment: So, my cat, whom I care for quite deeply, has no remorse, no compassion, self-awareness or, sadly, love."

Just curious - how did you come to that conclusion? Rather than the opposite conclusion that we have our emotions in common with our fellow-animals, and for the same reason, that the purpose of emothions is to drive behaviours? To take just one example, is parental care by mammals driven by unconscious processes or by love? Observation and reason point overwhelmingly to the latter IMO. Not to say that all animals feel all the same gamut of emotions or to the same degree (fear being probably the most common) - but these are the very details that get fascinating.
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Posted By: Kattt @ 09/16/2008 7:17:13 PM

So, my cat, whom I care for quite deeply, has no remorse, no compassion, self-awareness or, sadly, love. Without these traits, her species has managed to survive just fine, both domestically and in the wild. To suggest that the love I feel from my woman, or the imagination and emotions that stir in my head when I listen to Bach is there because I needed it to "survive", genetically, is ridiculous.

I agree that humans must endure being creatures living in the world; but I also conclude that we are more than creatures. What creature would kill itself because it's "sad"? A creature has no beliefs. Just because our brains light up in different sections when we're feeling different things, I find it disturbing that any scientist anywhere would have the audacity to conclude that they understand where love or remorse or compassion stem from (e.g. love being "created" in the brain instead of love being an outside force that the brain is reacting to).. Bottom line, homo sapiens would have survived and thrived without any higher understanding, love or compassion. We made tools and hunted well before we discovered any notion of God and the universe.

These researchers, who can't even see GRAVITY in the universe, are trying to dissect love? And whose love was this? Who were these people who were asked to feel love while laying in a brain scanning machine? The only thing this kind of science is good for is facilitating the pathways of injured brains.

What they've seen thus far in their scans is nothing more than our brain's animal responses to various stimuli. I'm sure my cat's brain would light up too if you show her a picture of a mouse. It doesn't mean she'll ever feel empathy for it.