Recent research in neuro-psychology includes the discovery of certain movement neurons which are activated when we observe others making movements we recognize from our own experience. These neurons are called “mirror neurons” and they are so powerfully triggered that to some part of our brains it is as if we actually made the movement ourselves.

Researchers happened on these neurons by accident and did not immediately recognize the full implications. Only after many observations in separate and unrelated experiments did they put together the correlating data and make sense of what they had. The full discovery ignited great excitement in the worlds of psychology and related areas of human behavioral study.

Here’s where it matters for our purposes: we make movements large and small every day. And they have impacts large and small on everyone around us, creating sympathetic and perhaps not-so-sympathetic reactions in others which may not even make sense to those who experience the reactions. For example, if you see me lift my coffee mug and take a sip, you don’t have to move a muscle to know exactly what I am experiencing at every point along the way. If you like coffee, you’ll enjoy that experience, creating a shared experience of pleasure.

If I furrow my brow in anger and draw my lips down in disapproval, you also know what I am experiencing in that moment without you having to be angry or disapproving yourself. And you will most likely not enjoy that experience, perhaps drawing away from me, or even expressing your own anger and disapproval to someone else if you connected deeply to your mirrored experience of anger and disapproval.

Everything we experience is put through our personal set of filters. So there is a great deal of room for error as we rely on our mirror neurons for input. Unfortunately, the part of the brain that processes our reaction to the movements and events triggered by the mirror neurons isn’t aware of those filters and processes the observation and movement data very quickly, unaware that the interpretations may be flawed. So most of the time before we have had the opportunity to become aware of our filters we have already assessed the incoming data and responded as if we KNEW what we were observing to be true based on the data alone.

Using the brow furrowing example, I might make that movement and accompany it with a grimace. Your mirror neurons and your filters interpret that as anger and you have an internal reaction to that, pulling away from me and perhaps, in the extreme, feeling the beginning of anger within you. However, I might merely be concentrating fiercely on a task that I find unpleasant or difficult. Particularly if I combine the brow furrowing and grimace with any kind of verbal exchange that includes tightness in my voice, you may still interpret this concentration as anger, most especially if you are highly sensitive to anger for any reason based on your past experiences.

One of the goals of increasing our self awareness is to increase the gap time between incoming data and response. We desire an increased gap time to allow us the opportunity to examine our filters and choose to engage with or without them in place. This requires practice and patience.

Several questions help us make good use of the discovery of mirror neurons: What data am I putting out for others to mirror? What impact is it having on them? What data am I taking in from others? How are my personal filters engaged to possibly alter my perceptions of that data? What are my default tendencies in response to that data? How can I increase my gap time?

mirror neurons, awareness, reactions, filters, default tendencies, choice