Synesthesia and Mirror Neurons

René Magritte, "The False Mirror "1928

You see someone get hurt and think “That had to painful.” Have you ever seen someone hurt and actually felt their pain?

There are people who have mirror-touch synesthesia. It’s a condition that causes them to feel what others feel. That can range from feeling someone else having their hair gently stroked to feeling the pain of someone across the room getting an injection, to a character in a horror film being slashed. “I feel your pain” – absolutely.

The mirror effect means also that a mirror-touch synesthete is standing opposite someone, so the injection in someone’s right arm will be felt in their own left arm.

That’s not the only type of synesthesia, which is defined as a mixing of the senses. It comes from the Greek “syn” (together) and “aesthesia” (sensation).

There are four main types of synesthesia:
Color-grapheme synesthesia – colors are associated with numbers, words or letters
Sound-color synesthesia – sounds are associated with colors
Word-taste synesthesia – words are associated with tastes
Taste-touch synesthesia – tastes are associated with physical sensations

There are lots of famous synesthetes including Duke Ellington (jazz musician), Richard Feynman (physicist), David Hockney (painter), Wassily Kandinsky (painter), Franz Liszt (composer), Vladimir Nabokov (writer), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (composer).  Synesthesia can be useful when it boosts memory abilities and creativity.

The cause(s) of synesthesia are still unknown, though it’s believed to have a hereditary association. Researchers believe that it’s found in 1 of every 200 people and is more common in women and left-handed people.

What got me checking into this area was reading The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans De Waal, a primatologist, who challenges the primacy of human logic and puts animals on a closer behavioral footing with humans. He also proposes that empathy is an instinctual behavior exhibited by both lab rats and elephants.

In the 1980s and 90s in Italy, neurophysiologists experimenting with macaque monkeys to study neurons specialized for the control of hand and mouth actions. They recorded from a single neuron in the monkey’s brain while the monkey was allowed to reach for pieces of food, so the researchers could measure the neuron’s response to certain movements. But, they also found, unintentionally, that some of the neurons they recorded from would respond when the monkey just saw a person pick up a piece of food.

Further experiments showed some similar results in humans. Mirror neurons are involved in mirror-touch synesthesia which produces an extremely developed sense of emotional empathy. Those mirror neurons activate when an individual is performing an activity and, to a lesser extent, when an individual is watching someone perform an activity. People who have mirror-touch synesthesia have very active mirror neurons, meaning that the effect is greatly enhanced. They empathize with the pain of others, as most of us do, but for them it might feels as if the pain is also being applied to them as well.

The research us still controversial, but perhaps further research can help us understand people with empathy-related conditions such as schizophrenia, Asperger’s syndrome and autism.

I also came across a film that is online about how synesthesia affects some people – Exactly Like Breathing is a film by Andres Cota Hiriart and Alessandra Moretti that gives you another perspective on the condition.