Free The Social Animal by David Brooks

the intentions behind them. Their neurons fired intensely when a glass was picked up in a context that suggested drinking, but they did not fire the same way when an empty glass was picked up in a context that suggested cleaning up. The monkey’s brains would not fire when scientists merely pantomimed picking up a raisin, but they did fire when the scientists picked up a real raisin. Their neurons fired in a certain characteristic pattern when they saw a scientist tearing a piece of paper, but they also fired in that same pattern when they merely heard a scientist tearing paper. In other words these weren’t mere “monkey see, monkey do” imitations of physical actions. The way the brains reacted to an action was inextricably linked to the goal implied by the action. We sometimes assume that the mental process of perceiving an action is distinct from the mental process of evaluating an action. But in these examples, the processes of perception and evaluation are all intermingled. They share the same representational systems, the same network patterns in the brain.
     
    Since those original experiments in Italy, many scientists, including Iacoboni, believe they have found mirror neurons in humans. Human mirror neurons help people interpret the intention of an action, although unlike monkey mirror neurons, they seem to be able to imitate an action even when no goal is detected. A woman’s brain will respond with a certain pattern as she watches a person use two fingers to pick up a wineglass, but her brain will respond in a different way as she watches a person use two fingers and the same action to pick up a toothbrush. Her brain will respond one way when it watches another human in the act of speaking, but a different way when it watches a monkey in the act of chattering.
    When people watch a chase scene in a movie, they respond as if they were actually being chased, except at lower intensity. When they look at pornography, their brains respond as if they were actually having sex, except at lower intensity. When Harold watched Julia look down lovingly at him, he presumably reenacted the activity in her brain, and learned how love feels and works from the inside.
     
    Harold would grow up to be a promiscuous imitator, and this helped him in all sorts of ways. Carol Eckerman, a psychology professor at Duke, has conducted research suggesting that the more a child plays imitation games, the more likely it is that the child will become an early fluent speaker. Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh found that the more two people imitate each other’s movements, the more they like each other—and the more they like each other, the more they imitate. Many scientists believe that the ability to unconsciously share another’s pain is a building block of empathy, and through that emotion, morality.
    However the science on mirror neurons eventually shakes out, the theory gives us a vehicle to explain a phenomenon we see every day, and never as much as in the relationship between parents and child. Minds are intensely permeable. Loops exist between brains. The same thought and feeling can arise in different minds, with invisible networks filling the space between them.

strong>Make ’Em Laugh
    One day, months and months later, Julia, Rob, and Harold were sitting around the table at dinner when Rob, absentmindedly, dropped a tennis ball on the table. Harold exploded in peals of laughter. Rob dropped it again. Harold’s mouth opened wide. His eyes crinkled. His body quaked. A little bump of tissue rose between his eyebrows, and the sound of rapturous laughter filled the room. Rob held the ball above the table, and they all sat there frozen in anticipation. Then he let it bounce a few times, and Harold exploded with glee, even louder than before. He sat there in his pajamas, his tiny hands oddly still, transported by laughter. Rob and Julia had tears coming out of their eyes, they were laughing so hard along with him. Rob kept doing it