Saturday, August 24, 2013

Empathy and Biology, Part 2

     In the last post, I was discussing the theory of mirror neurons.  These are neurons in the brain which are designed to react to other people's actions or experiences.  My question was, do empaths have more of these mirror neurons than others, or is there some other way to explain our gifts?

     If empaths are gifted with more than the usual amount of mirror neurons, perhaps this suggests that the mirror neurons are distributed among the population unequally, with some people receiving more, and others less.  One researcher's work may support this idea.  Dr. Iacoboni found that children with autistic spectrum disorder tended to have fewer mirror neurons than others without this disorder.  In fact, he found that the children with severe ASD had far fewer mirror neurons than those less affected by ASD.  So, maybe empaths were just born with more mirror neurons.  That is a possibility.

       But it doesn't answer certain questions about what empaths can do.  For example, how do you explain the ability to walk into a room and know what people's moods are almost instantly?  Or, how do you explain feeling family member's or close friend's emotions from across great distances?  Or, how do you explain the ability to sense the moods of someone you've never met, as I have with my Twin Soul?

      Researchers of the world, get on it!

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