“The face is the mirror of the mind,
and eyes without speaking
confess the secrets of the heart.”
—St. Jerome
Mirror neurons are the mechanism in our brain that help us learn by replicating—”mirroring”—what we witness. And news flash: mirror neurons don’t just mirror actions; they mirror emotions. They transmit empathy. They are the pathways of inspiration.
But wait, cutting-edge science is also proving what we’ve been discussing: reason, analysis, and logic “smudge the mirror.” They’re inspiration-killers.
Science, Not Shrines
What exactly, biologically, did Bono do to me on that fateful night in East Rutherford? I know he aroused my emotions, but what does that actually mean, scientifically speaking? What actually happens to a person’s body and brain when the Muses show up and work their Muse-magic?
I was raised Roman Catholic, baptized in the same Greenwich Village church where my parents were married and although, in my childhood, masses were no longer spoken in Latin, the Church was still a place of profound mystery for me, a place where spirts and saints would come and go, giving us what we wanted, if we were worthy. And so we prayed, we prayed for life after death and an Atari under the Christmas tree.
By fourth grade, I had become an altar boy, a rather devout one who made a shrine to the Virgin Mary in my bedroom using some of my mother’s Tupperware and pebbles I found in the driveway. This makeshift chapel was the focus of all my longing before I hit puberty. Any feeling I had, I shared with Our Lady of The Tupperware Grotto. I confessed my sins, but I also shared my hopes. I’d pray to be better at baseball, to be a better break dancer, and also for my parents and my brother, for our health and for the money that we needed. And I prayed for these things with the firm conviction that a divine spirit would indeed swoop from the heavens and deliver my dreams.
Perhaps it’s this lingering faith in supernatural spirits that keeps me clinging to the hope that inspiration is a heaven-sent mystery. It feels good to believe in magic, and it’s certainly much more dramatic when we do: just close your eyes and pray for Clio to appear. Cross your arms and pray for Bono to make you a believer. Maybe, maybe nudge the spirts along by reading some poems or watching Rocky or summitting a mountain at sunset and soaking in the grandeur of it all. But ultimately, the strategy to being inspired remains: be open and be patient.
I think this is what some people mean when they say that inspiration is inherently “beyond control.” It’s a force we’re lucky to feel when the Muses deem us worthy.
But, alas, science has a way of complicating our myths and, in matters of inspiration, the professors have been putting puzzle pieces on the table at a furious rate these past few years. Let’s see if we can arrange them in a way that begins to make neurological sense of what happens in those magic moments when it feels like spirits are working on our spirit.
A Monkey-Inspired Model of Inspiration
Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti looks a lot Einstein, which might just be a fantasy for many male scientists. He has unruly wisps of white hair and doesn’t seem too bothered by his tailoring. He flashes the kind of grin that suggests he has a giddy delight in discovering the mysterious workings of the human mind and, in the early 1990s, Dr. Rizzolatti and his team at The University of Parma did, in fact, discover a group of neurons in the mammalian brain that might just be the key to unlocking how inspiration works.1
And it was an accident.
The scientists were looking for the specific neurons in a monkey’s brain that linked to the monkey’s hand movement. If they could figure out exactly which neurons controlled grabbing and grasping, they might be able to develop treatments for people who had lost the ability to control their hands. This approach held great promise for curing all sorts of muscular maladies: if scientists could isolate the exact neuron that controls grasping, they’d also be able to isolate the neurons that control walking, for example.
By Dr. Rizzolatti’s admission, they were using a very “informal process.” They hooked up the monkeys to fMRI machines—brain-mapping machines—that would display exactly which parts of the monkeys’ brains would be activated as they performed a variety of movements. They would then offer peanuts to the monkeys and watch electrical currents ripple through their minds while they grasped the treat. By doing this, Dr. Rizzolatti and his team were able to identify the exact neuron in the pre-motor cortex that was activated every time a monkey grabbed a peanut: the F5 neuron. That F5 neuron, it seemed, was the neuron that helped our hands grab and grasp. A monkey grabs a peanut, F5 lights up. A man grabs a slice of cake, F5 lights up. Clear, simple, and useful science.
But, one day, the clear and simple science became infinitely odder.
Some of the scientists on Dr. Rizzolatti’s team were eating lunch, but they were doing so in the laboratory, steps away from the monkeys, still hooked up to the mind-mapping fMRI machines. This was Parma, so there was likely ham and cheese involved in the meal, but there were also peanuts. As the story goes, the team, in fact, dipped into the same stash they were using for the monkeys and, as they did so—as the scientists reached for the peanuts and grabbed a handful—they were startled by the beeps behind them. The fMRI machines whirred alive. To the astonishment of the researchers, the monkeys’ F5 neurons were firing—even though none of those monkeys were grabbing or grasping a single peanut.
This made no sense, especially to scientists who believed that each of the millions of neurons in a mammalian brain performed a unique function. The neuron that fires when you grab a peanut should not be firing when you witness somebody else grab a peanut. One is doing. The other is seeing.
And yet that’s exactly what had occurred. And it occurred again and again with experiment after experiment. As Dr. Rizzolatti explained, they had discovered neurons which “fire both when the monkey does something specific and when the monkey observes something of the same kind done by an individual.”2 From a neurological perspective, seeing and doing were starting to look like the very same thing.
Scientifically, this is a bizarre occurrence, but when we think about the experience of our own lives, it becomes more familiar. How many times have we watched sports, for example, and felt our bodies twitch with the movement of the athletes. We see a team jump off the bench to celebrate a goal and our body lurches off the couch as well. How many times have we seen somebody cry and felt a swell of sadness ourselves? In our lives, we’ve felt the connection between what we see and what we feel and what we do, but here in Parma, Italy was scientific proof of that mysterious chain of stimulation.
Dr. Rizzolatti called these neurons “mirror neurons”—because they copy or “mirror” the action we see another person perform even when we are not performing that action ourselves. And it’s no exaggeration to say that, over the past twenty years, mirror neurons have helped scientists explain so much of how our mind works.
Mirror neurons play a critical role in helping us learn, for example, by watching what another person does. A baby sees her mother mouthing a word, her own mirror neurons fire, and, eventually, she copies that mouth movement. A kid sees a basketball player shoot free throws, his own mirror neurons fire and, eventually, he copies those body movements. This is why most discussions of mirror neurons inevitably include the phrase “monkey see, monkey do.” It’s ridiculous, but true: our brains “do” what we witness, even if our bodies don’t budge.
For our purposes, however—and without making this an elaborate science lesson—there is one aspect to mirror neurons that might have great relevance to inspiration: mirror neurons mirror emotions, not just actions.
Through fascinating studies, including some with autistic children (who, according to one theory, have impaired mirror neurons that make it difficult for them to understand and mimic others), scientists have demonstrated that mirror neurons don’t just mirror actions; they also mirror feelings. Simply witnessing the emotional expressions of another person triggers those same emotions in us. This explains why we feel sad when we see somebody else cry or we smile when we see somebody laugh, regardless of our baseline feelings. It also explains how performance works: when we see Jennifer Lawrence heartbroken, we feel heartbroken as well, and, yes, when we see Bono enraged and indignant, we, too, feel enraged and indignant.
Dr. Rizzolatti explains that there’s a “mirror mechanism embedded inside our emotional centers,” and he uses a fun, gross example to explain it: When we see somebody smell rotten eggs and make a face of disgust, our very same mirror neurons are activated as when we actually smell rotten eggs. Smelling rotten eggs and seeing somebody make a face like they’re smelling rotten eggs generate the same response in our brain—and the same scrunched-up nose on our face.3
Now the implications of this biology get pretty cosmic. Mirror neurons are the mind’s instrument for “putting ourselves in the shoes of another person,” explains Dr. V. S. Ramachandran (TED talk superstar), which is why he calls mirror neurons “Gandhi Neurons.”4 He argues that they dissolve the barriers between people and help us share each other’s most intimate sensations. He identifies mirror neurons as the key to human empathy and, hence, the driver of human civilization itself. From monkeys stoked to see their doctors eat peanuts, mirror neurons have now become the biological basis for human relationships, the pathway for our passions.
Or think about it this way: mirror neurons are the “heart” of our brain, the place where we feel our emotions.
In fairness, the study of mirror neurons is still in its infancy, and there are some scientists who challenge some of these grandest claims, pointing out, for example, that human empathy is still possible in people with damaged mirror neurons. And yet most scientists have accepted the basic point we all experience: we feel what we witness.
As I learned about mirror neurons, I wondered if they could be the scientific explanation for how inspiration really works. Remember, scientists had avoided the study of inspiration for many years, but perhaps here was a laboratory-proven key to unlocking the mysterious process of the Muses. Are mirror neurons the “pathway” of inspiration? Is inspiration as “simple” as the transfer of emotion from a Muse to an audience—and, if so, does that give us a blueprint for inspiring each other? Does witnessing Bono become passionate about injustice trigger our mirror neurons to feel the very same sense of passion? Does seeing Steph Curry execute a steady series of three-pointers makes us feel motivated to do the same? Does hearing the conviction a teacher has in our ability to succeed activate the same faith in ourselves? Perhaps passion is literally infectious; it enters and possesses a person, changing the operations of her mind, determining her behavior. It’s a simple, chemical logic.
I was excited by my theory, but I knew I ought to run it by an expert. That led me to a giant in the field of modern neuroscience, Dr. Marco Iacoboni.5 Dr. Iacoboni doesn’t look like Einstein. He’s actually a bit of a jock—a passionate tennis player and an obsessive fan of the sport, which he described to me as his “daily meditation.” He collaborated with Dr. Rizzolatti and the team in Parma, bringing the study of mirror neurons from monkeys to humans, and at UCLA, he leads a laboratory that has done groundbreaking work to explain how mirror neurons work in a broad range of activities, from sports to music and video games to political advertising. But in his official biography, he makes his prejudices clear, “To be honest, I really don’t give a damn about the brain. I care about the human soul.” This was my guy.
And I was thrilled when Dr. Iacoboni agreed to talk to me. I explained my interest in inspiration, shared my conversion story about Bono, and clumsily communicated my layman’s theory that inspiration is the transfer of emotion through our mirror neurons.
“Right,” he said.
Well, that seemed simple.
But then, Dr. Iacoboni went on to talk about the critical factor I was missing in my formulation: intensity. He makes his point using the example of one of his favorite athletes, who, happily, happens to be my favorite athlete: Roger Federer. If you’re a fan of Federer’s and you’re lucky enough to watch him play live on the Centre Court of Wimbledon, you will feel a more intense “mirroring” of his performance than if you’re not a fan, watching the match on television while a million distractions buzz around your living room. In fact, Dr. Iacoboni sometimes watches tennis on television with the sound turned off so that he can feel the performance more intensely. As he explains it, “Silence allows you to tune into the athletic gesture, which allows you to feel the action more dramatically.”6
“Feel the action more dramatically.”
That last word contained the idea I needed: inspiration is the dramatic display of emotion. Inspiration is emotion expressed so dramatically that it stimulates an intense arousal in the audience.
The Color Commentary Conundrum
“Musicians sort of knew this already—that the emotional center is not the technical center, that funky grooves are not square, and what sounds like a simple beat can either be sensuous or simply a metronomic timekeeper, depending on the player.”
—David Byrne, How Music Works
Well, then, that seems easy enough: if you want to inspire, share your passion, show your emotions—and the magic of mirror neurons will do the trick of arousing your audience. If you believe—really believe—in the mission of your company, your team will feel that conviction and toil all weekend. If your kids feel your passion for their success and happiness, they’ll shut off the video games, hit the books, and rack up stellar grades.
Ah, if only it were that easy.
Scientists have also begun to discover what impedes the activation of mirror neurons—and, unfortunately, it’s exactly the thing we’re tempted to do instead of sharing our emotions: explaining.
Remember Dr. Iacoboni’s curious habit of watching tennis on television with the sound turned off. It was his strategy for creating a more “dramatic” mirroring of the superstar he was watching. His could “learn” to move like Federer if he could “plug in” to Federer, without distraction, guaranteeing the strongest mirroring of the activity he was witnessing. In some way, the commentary was a distraction, an inhibitor of mirroring. Now, certainly, there are times when he enjoys John McEnroe’s musings, but for matters of inspiration, that play-by-play analysis and explanation gets in the way.
The Reasonables don’t just subvert the Muses;
they murder them. Which brings us back to where we were: Passion – Reason = Inspiration
Dr. Iacoboni’s laboratory confirmed this phenomenon with an experiment they did that mirrored what happened with the monkeys in Parma. At UCLA, the scientists divided people into two groups and asked both groups to watch a video of a person grabbing a cup. Simple enough. But with one group, they asked the subjects to “think about” what the person might be using the cup to do after they grasped it—to drink it, pass it, clean it, smash it, whatever.7
The result surprised the team. Those people who were asked to think—to consider the possibilities, weigh the evidence, deduce a conclusion—exhibited less arousal in their motor cortex (one of the sites of their mirror neurons) than those who simply watched the video without any instructions. As Dr. Iacoboni explained it in an email to me, “The ‘analytical stance’ was truly shutting down the motor cortex of the observers” who were asked to think.8
Analysis paralysis, it seems, is a real biological phenomenon, a way of describing the antagonistic relationship between our prefrontal cortex and our motor cortex, the part that thinks things through and the part that gets things done.
Could it really be that “thinking” gets in the way of feeling? Could it be that “analysis” gets in the way of inspiration?
Of course, it does. And you don’t need a sophisticated justification from science to believe that. You’ve felt it. Your most exciting, inspired thinking generally happens when your brain is taking a break from its hard work of analysis—when you take a hot shower, a long walk, or when you’re in that hazy state of waking up in the morning and possibilities are strange and unlimited. We are at our most imaginative when our brains are relaxed from the hard toil of figuring things out.
Or, said another way, persuasion and inspiration are opposite energies. The more we try to persuade, to reason and marshal evidence, the more we engage our audience’s prefrontal cortex—and that seemingly benign act is exactly the thing that makes us less able to engage and arouse their emotions. You can’t argue somebody into eating an apple pie. If you want to inspire, you’ll need to turn down the volume on your own play-by-play commentary.