Mirror, mirror, tell me who I am...
A reflection on mirror neurons and the power of imagination.
Connexion
“Life is not molecules, but the connections between them.”
Professor Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1990, Giacomo Rizzolati * and his team discovered mirror neurons by accident: They were carrying out a series of experiments on a monkey, whose skull was covered with sensors, connected to a powerful scanner. For the lunch break, to save time, the team decided to eat in the lab. They cut a pizza and began to eat. At that moment, the monkey's scanner began to beep... Strange... The animal was strapped into its seat. He couldn't move, but as he looked at the humans eating, every time one of them reached for the pizza, the scanner buzzed. By observing the scanner, Rizzolati understands that, when the monkey sees one of the researchers reaching towards the object of desire (the pizza), in his brain, the same neural pathways are activated as if he were using his own hand, but without moving.
It was thanks to this pizza and this poor, hungry, and tired monkey that we discovered mirror neurons and their powers over our brain. A crucial discovery in the scientific exploration of the brain and the understanding of the human being.
*biological doctor, professor of physiology and director of the neuroscience department of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Parma
Imagination: a cerebral reality…
The human and primate brain is a complex organ that is capable of modifying itself in interaction with its environment. Our mirror neurons project into us a representation of the action, even if we do not carry out this action ourselves. These neurons act on our perception of reality. Our brain does not differentiate between an action experienced and an action simply observed or imagined. Our mirror neurons activate when we perform or watch an action, or when we imagine that we or someone else is performing an action. In these 3 situations, the same areas in the brain will light up. Neuroscience and functional MRI have highlighted the fact that for our brain, seeing and imagining are the same thing. In this article, we will focus on the imagination that our brain projects within us.
“This story is true, since I invented it.”
Boris Vian “Froth on the Daydream”
To make these statements more concrete, I invite you to test a very telling experiment proposed by Natacha Calestrémé in her book “The key to your energy”:
→ Imagine a small ball of aluminum that you roll between your fingers. Then place it in your mouth, between your molars… Then clench your teeth very tightly.
SO ?
This experience tends to provoke an unpleasant sensation: simply reading these few lines, you may start to feel shivers or a feeling of embarrassment, as if the ball was really stuck between your teeth... You were able, on a small scale, to measure the power of your mirror neurons and the power of your imagination on your brain.
“Imagining a situation as if it was real makes it authentic to our brain. The power of intention then takes on its full value.”
N. Calestrémé - “The Key to your energy”
Mirror neurons are essential for imitation, which is key to the learning process. From birth, this group of neurons is active and allows us to learn to move, eat, dress, speak... Mirror neurons are also important for planning our actions and for understanding the intentions behind these actions.
Children learn by observing, they imitate the actions of those around them and are imbued with the impressions conveyed by their observations. They see and hear the way their parents or teachers resolve conflicts and act in the same way when playing. They take ownership of the scenario unfolding around them thanks to the continuous work of their mirror neurons. Human beings discover themselves by looking at others, by interacting with others. These neurons are extremely fast workers of our analytical mind. They are so fast that most of the time we don't have time to realize their effects. We absorb a lot without our consciousness even being able to observe it. It is a brain mechanism very anchored in us.
«The stuff I am made of is a patchwork of small pieces borrowed from thousands of people. […] What was on the surface is buried like a Roman ruin, sinking little by little into the heart of ourselves, while our environment expands.[…] All this suggests that each of us is a recomposition of fragments of souls borrowed from others. » .
Douglas Hofstadter - American essayist, scientist and academic.
Are we mirrorballs ?
Brain physiology and mirror neurons
The brain is divided into lobes and cortical structures. Each of these lobes has certain specific functions. Mirror neurons are mainly located in the frontal lobe for planning, the execution of movement and the touch sensitivity. Some are found in the parietal lobe, managing the integral information of the senses. Some others are located in the insular cortices, linked to emotions and pain.
For example, by watching the gesture of a dancer, we activate areas located in the parietal lobe. However, these areas are known to house the somatosensory cortex, the part of our brain that senses sensations from the body. Thus, there would exist two complementary “mirror mechanisms”: one motor, the other sensory. Thanks to the first, we could "mentally replay" the motor program which leads to the realization of the gesture. Thanks to the second, we would construct a spatial and sensory map of this gesture. And finally, it would be the integration of all this information into a single circuit, called the "mirror neuron system", which would allow both the harmonious execution of the gesture and the ability to understand the meaning of the gestures of others, and beyond that, their intentions and perhaps also their feelings.
The power and influence of mirror neurons on our state of mind.
Mirror neurons are the basis of the mechanism that triggers reactions in a way that is almost automatic or difficult for humans to avoid: laughter can spread, we can cry while watching a sad film, or more simply, yawn when seeing a person doing it in front of us. We have the ability to feel what others feel, to empathize with them and understand their feelings.
Mirror neurons are therefore powerful vectors of empathy and compassion. They are relationship and culture builders. They allow us to discover and learn about others through a language devoid of words, but full of impulses.
Quite consciously, I can say that personally, I spend a lot of time trying to understand the emotions of others. Sometimes in a more unconscious way, I capture them, decipher them, and assimilate them. When these emotions are not digestible or understandable, my inner being may suffer, or find itself blocked or disturbed by something that is sometimes not nameable by my conscious state.
Mirror neurons never rest. They automatically interpret even the smallest gestures. They inform you of everything that is available to you. Through their analyses, they try to predict what others will do.
Your brain is a radar specializing in capturing everything in its surroundings whether in the cognitive or metacognitive domain (meta-cognition: process of self-observation - in short, it is the act of thinking one's own thoughts). This very empathetic role of our mirror neurons gives us the ability to decode the emotions of others, an ability that has a big impact on our relationships. As we saw earlier, this capacity allows us more tolerance and understanding of others. But our brain could also automatically mislead us or push us towards assimilating certain impressions perhaps too quickly.
The neuron is considered the constituent element of the communication pathways of our body. Neurons carry an electrical signal. The small electrical impulses propagated by the neurons form the basic messenger, which supports the nerve impulse. In the cell body of our neurons, information processing takes place. This cell body then synthesizes all the data that reaches it. A neuron receives a stream of continuous information. It must constantly assess the importance of the messages before transmitting the summary of this information. If information is considered sufficiently important, the neuron will notify its neighbors by means of an action potential. This whole process takes place in thousandths of a second: it is extremely quick. This means that the human brain makes an initial judgment about its interlocutor at lightning speed. Our brain has deduced something without us having time to really think about it. The speed is such that it would be possible to wonder if this cerebral judgment, which will strongly influence our thinking, is capable of misleading us or, on the contrary, of giving us access to a relevant intuition devoid of verbal manipulation - but perhaps disturbed by cognitive manipulation... Personally, I feel that it depends on the situations, and on our internal state... I have had moments where a very instantaneous judgment was of service to me. But sometimes the speed of my initial judgment misled me, locked me into a limiting thought about someone... which would be the reflection of a limiting thought of myself...
“I wonder if our personal identity - what we commonly call our personality - does not originate from a protective mechanism based on fear. I also wonder if this kind of shield that this personality constitutes, instead of protecting us, would not end up locking us in and cutting us off from our fundamental impulses, depriving us of the inner energy which we need to live and to become creators of our lives.”
Guy Corneau - “Victims of others, executioner of oneself”
The influence of the amygdala, which is a neuronal structure involved in the learning and expression of fear conditioning, could tip us towards defense mechanisms which sometimes generate limiting beliefs. We know that the amygdala has shown mirroring properties with respect to emotional expressions.
Based on events from the past which resurface unconsciously, I emit a positive or negative impression on the person in front of me, depending on the impressions that I capture from them. At that moment, the person will develop an attitude that responds to this unconscious impression held hostage: an impression dictated by experiences of the past. More concretely, this person awakens suffering in me, something unresolved. It can also happen when a person unconsciously reminds me of another person with whom I have not had a good experience in the past, which means that the person who is now in front of me will unconsciously respond to my impulses. She feels hostility and will become hostile herself. During this process of confusion created by the mirror effect that correlates or collides with our past experiences, our brain has created what is called a limiting belief.
We could therefore emphasize here that what others convey has an impact on us and that what we ourselves convey has a lot of impact on others and our relationship with them. We trigger things in people and people trigger things in us in a mechanical echo which very often remains unconscious and which emerges from the unconscious.
“I understood that my dreams and my visions came to me from the depths of the collective unconscious”
Carl Gustav Jung - “The RED BOOK”
By approaching the notion of the collective unconscious, Jung evokes an even deeper effect of the mirror effect which conditions humans: the great mirror of the world in its entirety - a sort of moving magma of our deepest instincts, our fears, our most primal desires, beyond our personal past which affects us and those around us. Jung evokes the fact that our common past as human beings is deeply anchored in each of us, this magma encompasses and binds us all. In view of this analysis, it seems even more logical and natural to me that we see in others a mirror which allows us to learn and become, but also allows us to try to identify who we are, to feel where we come from, to understand where we are going... Jung considers the collective unconscious to be the source of our creativity, our intuition and our inspiration. It seems that every person's story is reflected in this mirror, and every story can be reflected in each of us. This means that creativity allows us to get closer to our universality.
The moving magma of collective consciousness.
Mirror neurons and creation: valuable allies of transformation?
Regarding dramaturgical creation, which we explore within La Porte Rouge, we can emphasize here that the dramatic code is deeply anchored in the human mind. This dramatic code is “an artistic description of the possibilities of development of a person”, explains JOHN TRUBY in his work “The Anatomy of Story”. This code is a process underlying every story, a code that the storyteller hides under fictional actions and characters.
However, as mentioned above, the brain does not differentiate between reality (reality in action) and imagination (visualized imagination). This could mean that we are potentially creators of reality capable of initiating transformations.
Is it possible to use or thwart the powerful mechanisms of our brain to make them work for our well-being, our evolution?
When a person experiences a bad influence through the mirror effect, captured by the force of the influence of a harmful or malicious environment, is it possible for this person to use their imagination to develop or create other, more beneficial mirror influences?
For Hofstadter, the power of an idea is just as real as that of a cell or a nerve impulse, since one cannot exist without the other.
Personally, I have noticed that I grow a lot when creating fictional characters. To build my characters, I push mental boundaries more effectively. I place myself in a new perspective, which brings freedom of action and reflection. This freedom acts like a fertilizer which nourishes a sometimes arid land where energy and nutrients no longer circulate in a flourishing field of possibilities. This opening of possibilities allows me to go where I need to go. It’s a way of letting the unconscious lead me towards what resonates within me. Creation carries meaning.
Imaginary creation has the capacity to form a restorative loop.
To create characters, we use mirror effects by drawing inspiration from what we know in our reality: our observations, our feelings... This inspiring material becomes a creative breath capable of reflecting itself to take shape and evolve within a story which promises to transform the character who passes through it.
“Among artists, imitation can add or remove information from the imitated model. Leonardo da Vinci, painting the Mona Lisa, forgets what she was (her smell, her voice, her laugh), but adds his own view of her. B. Vico* already noticed it, when he defined the process of remembrance, split into three moments : - Memoria, the memory, the capacity to remember; Fantasia, the imagination, which modifies these same things - Ingegno, the invention, which reconfigures things, gives them a new turn, according to new relationships.”
Joël Thomas. “IMAGINARY SCIENCES, QUANTUM PHYSICS AND NEUROSCIENCES: A DIALOGUE”
*Giambattista Vico: Neapolitan philosopher, theorist, historian and jurist, who developed a metaphysics and a philosophy of history.
This new perception allows the reader, spectator or observer to appropriate a new vision of others and therefore of themselves.
Inspiration, which arises from what we can feel within ourselves and perceive around us consciously and unconsciously, associated with the evaporation of the boundaries that the imagination offers are constituent impulses of the creative process. This frees us and allows us to rebuild. This creative open-mindedness often allows us to go further within ourselves.
At the end of the loop, the inspiring being who initially found himself in front of the mirror will allow those who observe the reflection of this imagined and transformed being to feel understood, capable, renewed. It is perhaps at this moment that the loop closes to become restorative. The possibilities therefore open up to those who use their imagination to push back the boundaries that keep them at the preface of their evolution. All of a sudden, the perception changed... Something happened... We went further and the alchemy happened. The creative process is liberating in this sense, because it makes us climb the mountain to the top, from where we can see the sun rise. This mountain that we could never have imagined climbing if imagination itself had not been there to make us believe it. And the result is a work that will allow us to communicate this experience to our unconscious and to others. The power of creation is contagious.
We would then have to build this new imagination, an imagination capable of guiding us further than the mechanisms of our brain, or an imagination which guides these same mechanisms so that they become our allies in our quest for meaning and evolution.
“We do not passively perceive the world, we actively generate it.”
Anil Seth - neuroscientist and professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex.
To be creative, we must mobilize both hemispheres of our brain. Creative people will use their left hemisphere to draw on what they have learned and their right hemisphere to explore other possibilities. The creative person is the one who dares to question their knowledge, it is their curiosity which often leads them on unknown paths in search of novelties.
A dynamic of the spirit.
The brain always changes what we consciously experience based on the input it receives. Changing our perception of what we experience is a powerful dynamic.
This ability to change perception can lead us on the path to an inner space of freedom which allows us to draw on ourselves the meaning that we seek most of the time externally, in others.
“We are beings who are very dependent on each other and on everything that surrounds us… However, within this interdependence, a position of autonomy can be found… An inner space of freedom in which we do not feel completely determined either by our past or by our immediate environment.”
Guy Corneau
Could this position of liberating autonomy be achieved through the use of our imagination? Imagination allows us to let our unconscious speak. The unconscious finds in creation a door to process essential symbols into our creations. Symbols that could allow us to understand ourselves better.
The movie The never ending story illustrates this point well, because this story establishes a parallel between the daily life of the little boy, who is the main character of the film, and the story he reads in a book. The story that the little boy reads reflects, on a symbolic level, the emotions that stir within him in real life.
We can reclaim the legend of which we are the hero or heroine by going beyond our borders. It is exactly this self-transcendence which is the essence of the fictional character who takes action.
The American mythologist, professor and writer JOSEPH CAMPBELL confirms this throughout his work. “The hero with a thousand faces” : “The hero is the man or woman who has succeeded in overcoming their own limitations”.
The intention of our artistic exploration laboratory is to support those who need to go beyond their own boundaries, through a creative and therapeutic self-exploration: a benevolent mirror which will allow the one who opens the Red Door to find the hero or heroine who hides in them.
“All the great things that have happened in our world first happened in one person’s imagination.”
Astrid Lindgren
An article presented by :
Mathilda R. Ström - Founder of the Red Door. Artist, author, film-director and searcher for meaning.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE:
revues
les cahiers science et connaissance - “Comment fonctionne notre espprit ? cerveau et neurosciences.
Sapiens n°2 - Conscience et cerveau.
SAPIENS n°5 - Conscience et physique quantique.
OUVRAGES
Sciences de l’imaginaire, physique quantique et neurosciences: un doalogue - Joël Thomas
“l’anatomie du scènario” - John Truby
“Le héros aux mille et un visage” - Joseph Campbell
“L’éveil de la petite grenouille” - Eline Snel
“Victime des autres, bourreau de soi même” Guy Corneau
“La clé de votre énergie” Natacha Calestrémé
“Le livre rouge” Carl Gustav JunG
ARTICLES EN LIGNE
C’est quoi les neurones miroirs - bloghoptoys
Les neurones miroirs - cyrilmaitre.com
Tango et neurones miroirs - neurodyspaca.org
VIdéos
“Les neurones miroirs” - David Lefrançois
