Mirror-touch synaesthesia: the role of shared ... - UCL Discovery

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Chapter 4
Recent research has suggested that one neurophysiological mechanism which
may mediate people’s abilities to empathize and understand the emotions of others is
shared affective neural systems in which common brain areas are activated during
both experience and passive observation of other’s experiences. Moreover, building
on the discovery of mirror neurons in the monkey brain (Gallese, Fadiga, Fogassi, and
Rizzolatti, 1996; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004), functional brain imaging has
suggested the existence of mirror systems in humans not only for actions (e.g.
Buccino et al., 2001), but also for sensations and emotions (e.g. disgust: Jabbi, Swart
and Keysers, 2006; Wicker, Keysers¸ Plailly, Royet, Gallese, and Rizzolatti, 2003;
touch: Blakemore, Bristow, Bird, Frith, and Ward, 2005; Ebisch, Perucci, Ferretti, Del
Gratta, Luca Romani, and Gallese, 2008; Keysers, Wicker, Gazzola, Anton, Fogassi,
and Gallese, 2004; pain: Avenanti, Beuti, Galati, and Aglitoi, 2005; Bufalari, Aprile,
Avenanti, Di Russo, and Aglioti, 2007; Morrison, Lloyd, di Pellegrino, and Roberts,
2004; Singer, Seymour, O’Doherty, Kaube, Dolan, and Frith, 2004; emotion: Carr,
Iacoboni, Dubeau, Mazziotta, and Lenzi, 2003). These systems may be crucial for
empathy because they enable the observer to simulate another’s experience by
activating the same brain areas that are active when the observer experiences the same
emotion or state (Gallese, 2006; Gallese and Goldman, 1998; Keysers and Gazzola,
2006; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007). Consistent with this, is evidence that
increased activations in the auditory mirror system are correlated with high self
reported empathy (Gazzola, Aziz-Zadeh, and Keysers, 2006); that increases in trait-
cognitive empathy are correlated with increases in sensorimotor simulation when
viewing others’ pain (Avenanti, Minio-Paluello, Bufalari, and Aglioti, 2009); and that
participants self reported empathy skills are positively correlated with levels of
cortical mirroring of when witnessing disgust (Jabbi et al., 2006). Furthermore, there