360 GRADI MAGAZINE // March-April 2021

meaning of a word. For example, in this
image at a certain point in the text, the
protagonist says: “the forest of Dean!!! … I
used to go there once to go camping with
my parents”. When we read the word forest
they form in the reader’s mind like
drawings of trees and flying birds, so
when we read, thanks to this ability, we
produce mental images relating to what
we are reading. When I read the word
forest, not from the ophthalmologist who
puts a few letters in front of me to read,
but in the context of a novel, I produce
visualizations evoked by the word forest.
That’s why we love reading novels so
much, because we visually experience
what is not actually visual.
How can all this happen? In seeing this
image, we all say this is
a letter “f” and a written
word is made up of signs
that become circles, rods,
dots, thank you (typographic
fonts). At this
point you may be wondering
what is the use of
talking about something
so immediate and so
obvious about which
there seems to be nothing to say. What
seems so obvious to us actually required
a job on the part of our brain that lasted
about 300,000 years, since homo sapiens
acquired symbolic thought, therefore the
thought formed by concepts of universal
value that apply to everyone. . From this
first phase, from this conquest, 295 thousand
years have passed, at least, to get to
write this conquered symbolic thought;
the evolutionary work, which our brain
did to get to conquer the use of writing
and with this enter into history, lasted a
very long period. This not only because
of the importance of thinking in a universal
way that would bring everyone together
(for which the one who is a dog
for me is also a dog for one who is on
the other side of the world) but also because
it was essential that I could write
my thoughts and then pass it on to future
generations. Evolution has done
its best and only after a suitable period
of time has it succeeded; the cuneiform
characters which are the first forms of
writing that appeared in human culture
appeared about 5000 years ago.
In this drawing, which shows the human
brain seen from its lower part and
from the back, those areas are highlighted
that took 295,000 years to organize
themselves functionally and preside
over the recognition of the shape
of the letters. Only when this skill was
developed was our brain able to read
and write, that is, the curls and circles
that form the words began to make sense
and, with the advent of writing, man
entered history.
Let’s review another aspect of considerable
interest which is that of mirror
neurons, a topic I wrote about in previous
articles of the journal but which
deserves to be analyzed for the countless
and important functions of these
nerve cells. Mirror neurons are a set
of structures, among which the most
studied is that relating to the prefrontal
lobe, which first of all constitute the
neurobiological basis of empathy; empathy
is that psychic function, but with
a strong neurobiological basis, which
allows us to enter the mind of others,
to formulate a theory of what the other
thinks and what the other intends to
do. This function allows us, for example,
to play as a team and to hunt in
groups; it allows us in the fraction of a
moment to understand, playing soccer,
34 360 GRADI