On The Same Wave. Part 1 - Reviews, Self-development

Publishing excerpts from the book

• Amy Banks and Lee Hirschman
• On the same wave. The neurobiology of harmonious relationships
• Moscow. "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber". 2016

If you feel the need for healthier, more mature relationships, and want to abandon the old patterns of building them that bring you pain, use the recommendations of the authors of this book on developing neural pathways and reconfiguring them to actively interact with others. With hands-on tools drawn from the experiences of modern neuroscience, you can “tune” your brain for deep relationships, master communication skills, forget about loneliness and become happier

Ask your friend to rub their hands vigorously as you look at them. Chances are, as soon as his hands get warm from friction, you too will feel warmth in his hands. After an experiment with monkeys, a hypothesis was put forward that there are mirror neurons in our brain - nerve cells responsible for imitating other people. Most scientists no longer talk about the existence of special mirror neurons, instead claiming a mirror system that encompasses the entire brain, the tasks of which are performed by a number of brain regions and neural pathways.

The mimicry effect (which explains why your hands get warm when your friend rubs his own) occurs because the neural circuits in your brain copy what you see and hear. The nerve cells in the frontal prefrontal cortex (the ones that get activated when you plan to rub your hands and then follow through with that plan) start to fire. At the same time, neurons in the somatosensory cortex (the area of the brain responsible for bodily sensation) are activated and send you signals of friction and heat. At the deepest level of the brain, you are the one who rubs your hands, even if they don't really move.

In reality, this process goes far beyond simply displaying the actions of another person. Your mirror system is made up of neurons that can "see" or "hear" what someone else is doing. It involves neurons from other parts of the brain in the process of providing you with information not only about sensations and actions, but also about emotions, which allows you to create a complete, detailed picture of what your counterpart is experiencing.

That is why you almost instantly capture the emotions of others. As you watch me rub my hands, your brain can read the excitement I feel on my face, demonstrating how the mirror system works. As a result, you yourself can get excited

If you've ever smiled in response to a smile from a complete stranger, or if your partner's latent tension made your heart beat faster, this is the action of the mirror system. This emotional contamination occurs through a neural pathway that is, in fact, able to perceive the emotions of another person and reproduce them within you.

When I invite groups of people to experiment with hand rubbing, there are usually two types of reactions. Some are amazed, as if they just saw themselves pull the rabbit out of their hat (the neurological connection with other people seems like a miracle to them). Others immediately declare, "This is creepy!"

I understand why this is happening. You have been taught all your life that your mind is a small castle, surrounded by a high, thick wall designed to keep your thoughts and feelings inside, not letting in anything from the outside.

Therefore, you may be confused to learn about the power of the mirror system. In fact, its discovery casts doubt on some traditional assumptions about the structure of our brain and body

Vittorio Gallese, a neurophysiologist at the University of Parma laboratory, describes the role of the mirror system in interactions between people: "The mechanism of the neural network is involuntary, allowing us not to think about what other people are doing or feeling, but just to know it." UCLA psychiatry professor Marco Iacoboni takes this idea even further in his book Mirroring People, arguing that the mirror system helps us “understand our existential state and our interactions with others. [This suggests that] we are not alone, but biologically arranged and created by evolution in such a way as to be deeply connected with each other."

The impression of interaction with each person remains in my nervous system. I literally store this contact in me in the form of a neural fingerprint

The next time you hear someone say to you, “Don't let others influence your emotions,” think of the mirror system, because we simply don't have a choice. For better or worse, people around us influence us, and we are not divided, as psychologists once believed.

To be continued