I’ve just read about these and suddenly something about me makes sense. I’ve never understood why people have trouble continuing to eat if someone at the table says poo or farts or whatever. Some people literally get up and leave. Not me, doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
You see a stranger stub her toe and you immediately flinch in sympathy, or you notice a friend wrinkle up his face in disgust while tasting some food and suddenly your own stomach recoils at the thought of eating.
… For mirror neurons appear to let us “simulate” not just other people’s actions, but the intentions and emotions behind those actions. When you see someone smile, for example, your mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, creating a sensation in your own mind of the feeling associated with smiling. You don’t have to think about what the other person intends by smiling. You experience the meaning immediately and effortlessly.
The mirror neuron system also appears to allow us to decode (receive and interpret) facial expressions. Whether we are observing a specific expression or making it ourselves (a frown of disgust, for example) the same regions of our brain become activated. And the better we are at interpreting facial expressions, the more active our mirror neuron system.
These findings suggest that the mirror neuron system plays a key role in our ability to empathize and socialize with others, for we communicate our emotions mostly through facial expressions. And, indeed, studies have found that people with autism—a disorder characterized, in part, by problems during social interactions—appear to have a dysfunctional mirror neuron system.
http://www.brainfacts.org/brain-basics/neuroanatomy/ articles/2008/mirror-neurons/
I don’t completely lack them. I can’t watch someone being cut in a movie, or injected. But what do I feel when someone smiles? Not as much as others, it seems. Which explains why I don’t usually smile back.