Kevin Goldstein
Week 13: April 30th: Social Neuroscience
This week’s readings on social cognition illuminate many of the topics we have addressed this semester; as we have already concluded, in charting human emotional life we are charting human social life. Central to these readings is a reorientation of cognitive neuroscience toward the interpersonal, a great example being Rizzolatti’s mirror neurons coupled with the chameleon effect. The notion that there exist neurons which are stimulated equally by actions either performed or observed has immense implications for a species. As Ramachandran argues, this mimetic predisposition could have fueled the big bang in human evolution some 40,000 years ago; at the very least, sudden innovations would have become sustainable very quickly.
More generally, mirror neurons decenter the concept of the autonomous, perceiving subject, placing the emphasis instead on self-in-relation-to others (Frith and Frith). In a sense, perceived action (when the agent is conspecific) is initiated action; this necessarily touches on empathic reasoning—putting oneself in another’s shoes—and similarly, to aesthetic perception—catharsis and other emotions, especially when observing a drama. Naturally our sociality cannot be separated from our creativity, our great capacity to learn and innovate. As Blakemore, Winston, and Frith (2004) explain, “there is increasing evidence that a large portion of the human motor system is activated by the mere observation of action” (217). How extraordinary that perceived events in space can initiate a motor response—indeed, that observation is fundamental in this operation!
In the case of the chameleon effect, we largely unintentionally mimic social partners, unconsciously establishing good rapport. The chameleon effect is representative of a range of human signals which both affirm self-other relationships and sustain a mutually perceived reality. I was reminded of Donald Winnicott’s notion of transitional objects in child development. In short, anything from toys to words can constitute objects of mutual contemplation—very often as play objects—between the developing child (starting at around one year of age) and caregiver, aiding in the process of self-construction. As Frith and Frith (2007) explain, “a major function of social cognition in humans is to allow us to create a shared world in which we can interact” (R727). Both unconscious and conscious gestural and linguistic signals do not merely serve to exchange information, but to establish and sustain human relationships through a mutually understood paradigm.
Frith and Frith (2007) continue their review by delving into the question of consciousness and social cognition: “Rather than being private, conscious experiences are represented in a form that can be shared by others, thereby creating the common ground for culture” (R720). Bringing us back to the discourse of emotions, can we say then that what defines the “feeling” as a phenomenological event is precisely its communicability? Even a linguistic construct built around a nebulous “emotion” has real social value. For example, how we choose to construct social displays and thus manage reputation—to the extent that we can—, what signals we express, can engender palpable affective responses in those around us.
Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004) conjecture that the common neural alarm system between physical and social pain, which has its origins in the mammalian youth’s (and especially Homo sapiens) especially long ontogenesis, has produced a lifelong need for social connections and distress when those connections are severed. Such conjecture is intriguing, though ultimately it would seem sociality is evolutionarily advantageous not merely in childhood but throughout one’s lifetime. The need for human connection can arguably be traced back to the concept of reciprocal altruism. Nonetheless, this feature of social behavior is not simply a life-long series of minute business transactions, but as we have seen time and again, is entrenched in an affect-rich network of interpersonal associations.
4 comments:
In part of your post you discussed the social value of the communicability of emotions. I think this is an important concept that has been discussed indirectly in previous class discussions and was articulated more clearly in this weeks readings. Part of the evolutionary benefit of the way we feel emotions is that they can be simplified to a language with which we can express them. We have often talked about why we need to rationally evaluate our emotions, why it is necessary that there exist a high road to our emotional reactions. Is it possible that the only real benefit is that it allows us to be social creatures?
I found the article on the pain of rejection fascinating, particularly the idea that the brain’s “social-attachment system has borrowed computations from the pain system to prevent the potentially harmful consequences of social separation.” When pain is subdivided, as the author’s do in this paper (sensory processing and felt unpleasantness) it seems very likely that the two pain systems they are indicating would overlap, even in a neural sense. Additionally, when looked at in terms of natural selection, it makes a lot of sense to think that these process would overlap for they are both trying to avoid some sort of human harm, whether it involves physical pain being inflicted or social separation, which although distinct, can be just as painful.
The idea that our reaction to someone’s emotional response—which is communicated beyond words, through facial expressions, gazes and body language—gives me hope in regards to our empathic capacity. (Rather then our deceptive ability, which is part of social cognition learning, that which allows us to pretend in the first place.) Once our external features mirror our inner state of feeling, it seems more honest then any words could try to describe. Is this why Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy claims that music is the most necessary element of theatre, as it reaches beyond the verbal, so to say the language of the soul?!
Speaking of theatre, as is very appropriate here because in theatre we take these fundamental social cues, such as a gazes, and attribute meaningful massages to them that the audience should pick up upon. The Chinese Noh theatre uses mostly eye movement and body language to convey the story of the characters, without words, only a narrator to give us the scenario. It is interesting that in art these almost unnoticed fundamentals of social life become elevated to be consciously read by an audience. Theatre relies on meaning from social signals and could be understood as a larger scale of the idea of joint attention, in which the actors are the object. Two or more actors with a conflict, and the audience can through empathy experience their conflict without themselves actually going through it, hopefully to learn something of it. I wonder how we could benefit from this more in the actual daily life we lead; how wonderful could the creation of a shared world be, in which everyone is so attentive that they objectively listen to one another?
I also find it really fascinating how this week's articles challenge the idea of an autonomous self. Instead, a successful self in relation to others is the foundation for social cognition. The physical body seems so important to this development. Reading faces and the activation of the motor system through mirror neurons are both such crucial parts of social cognition which require the body. The evidence about the shared system for physical and social pain further emphasizes this point. We started out the semester with William James stating that emotion requires a body and more and more we see that cognitive and social development are also profoundly connected to physicality. This occurs both through the actual body or just mental representation of space. For example, empathy is related to ability to see from another person's perspective, quite literally.
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