MIRRORS OF CULTURE

Culture has always been a fluid, dynamic term that is conventionally associated with art, literature, architecture, language, tradition and ancestry. One working definition of culture, as given by the Britannica Encyclopedia, is the totality of socially transmitted behavioral patterns, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. Through the ages, culture has been defined in terms of aesthetics, social norms and linguistics but what if there was a neurological explanation to this complex system?

Italian researcher Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues have identified a group of neurons called Mirror Neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain. A mirror neuron is fired when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action being performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primates, humans and other species including birds. This is the basis of imitative behaviour. Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of Cognitive Research Center, University of California, believes that the mirror neurons are the basis of culture and civilization.

The mirror neurons are a subset of the motor neurons and they are triggered when an individual observes another performing an action. However, not all the observed actions are imitated, as the sensory receptors of our skin send a stronger message to the brain, inhibiting the signals triggered by the mirror neurons. V. Ramachandran and his colleagues devised an experiment where the skin receptors of the participants were desensitized. As hypothesized, the desensitized participants were found making involuntary movements when they were made to observe individuals performing certain actions. This established the role of the mirror neurons in imitative behavior or as V Ramachandran puts it “the neurons are adopting to the other person’s point of view.”

V Ramachandran then made a historical observation. Seventy five thousand years ago there was a sudden emergence and rapid spread of a number of skills that are unique to human beings like tool use, the use of fire, the use of shelters, language, the ability to understand an individual’s mind and interpret behaviour. Even though the human brain had achieved its present size almost three or four hundred thousand years ago, the emergence of mirror neurons was seen only seventy five thousands year ago. V Ramachandran attributes the rapid development of human civilization to this sudden emergence of a sophisticated mirror neuron system, which allowed one to imitate other people's actions. Hence, when there was a sudden accidental discovery by one member of the group, like the use of a particular tool, it spread rapidly across the population, and was transmitted down the generations.

The imitation of complex skills is now known as culture and it is the basis of civilization.