More often than not, a revolutionary discovery would go unnoticed for the longest time, before people finally realize just how ground breaking it is. I think we are looking at one such discovery here:Recently in Toronto, a new class of brain neuron cells was identified, and tagged "mirror neurons". Mirror neurons are exceptional in that they create a powerful physical capacity for empathy. How? Read on...
We have known for a long time that neurons in a particular area of the brain (called the inferior parietal lobule) respond by firing electric pulses when you cause the patient to feel pain, say by poking the patient with a needle. We call those pain-sensing neurons. But researchers in Toronto recently found that on human patients, some of these neurons responded, not only when the patient himself is in pain, but also fired equally when the patient watched another patient be poked with a needle!
These neurons - mirror neurons - are literally dissolving the barrier between the self and the others, showing that our brains are actually wired up for empathy and compassion! There is no metaphorical talk here: these neurons simply cannot tell if you or the other person is being subjected to pain, thereby they are doing a wonderful job at literally "feeling someone else's pain".
The scientific society seems to be unmoved by this discovery, but I think that it is most remarkable, perhaps the most significant result of medical research in centuries. We now have scientific basis for phenomena such as empathy, compassion, and good will. These have forever been far in the realm of spiritual/religious discussions, far from the reach of science. With knowledge of this sort, a new, most important bridge between science and human nature is about to be built. One that can take us much closer to a firm grounding in the scientific theory of human being.
Why is that important? I believe it is the precisely this gap between science human nature has been behind most of our problems lately. Science is the basis of our lives in modern societies, yet human nature can only be understood using much older tools (morality, spirituatlity, philosophy, religion, etc.) and thus we are torn between two extreme, and often contradictory mindsets, as is often the case in any transitional phase. Once we have built sufficient bridges between the old and the new, only then can we cross safely into a fully scientific understanding of life, one that we can all learn to cherish.
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