심리학 거울뉴런과 공감의 문명(빌라야누르 라마찬드란의 강연)

[메디치]

View subtitles를 누르시고 Korean을 선택하시면 한글자막으로 보실 수 있습니다.


지금으로부터 20년 전쯤의 파르마 신경생리학 실험실. 마카크 원숭이를 대상으로 쥐기, 들기, 찢기, 물건을 입으로 가져가기 등 손의 움직임에 영향을 미치는 전운동피질 영역(F5영역)을 조사하고 있었습니다. 어느 누구도 이 실험에서 놀라운 발견이 이루어질거라 상상하진 못했겠지요. 여느날과 마찬가지로 학자들은 마카크 원숭이를 대상으로 손의 움직임을 어떤 영역에서 명령을 내리는지 연구하려고 하였습니다.


실험에 들어가기 전에 신경생리학자 갈레세는 아무 생각 없이 무엇인가를(결국 어떤 것을 쥐려했는지 기억해내지 못했다는군요.) 잡으려고 손을 뻗자, 그것을 지켜보던 마카크 원숭이의 F5영역이 발화되기 시작했습니다. 원숭이는 어떠한 것을 쥐려고 하지 않았는데도 손움직임을 관장하는 전운동피질이 발화되었지요. 단순히 남의 움직임을 지켜보는 것만으로. '거울뉴런'이란 놀라운 발견의 시작이었지요. 이후 인간의 두뇌에도 거울뉴런이 존재한다는 사실이 밝혀지게 되었습니다.


이는 인간의 두뇌가 상대의 행위에 대해서 인위적인 계산을 할 뿐만이 아니라, 무의식적이고 즉각적인 반응을 일으킨다는 것을 뜻합니다. 거기에 약간의 비약을 추가하여 상대의 움직임에 대해서 자신도 움직이고 있다고 느끼게 되는 것이지요. 남성의 주요부위에 매우 강한 충격이 가해지는 동영상을 보았을 때, 그 것을 보는 사람도 움찔해지는게, 거울뉴런에 의해 상대의 고통을 어느 정도 동일시하게 되는 것입니다.(물론, 이 것은 직접적인 고통으로 이어지지 않습니다. 마이클 가자니가가 <왜 인간인가>에 쓴 것처럼, '부상입은 병사 입장에선 자신이 어떻게 아픈지 공감할 수 있는 의무병을 원하지, 자신의 고통을 똑같이 느껴서 똑같이 괴로워하는 의무병을 원하지' 않죠).


라마찬드란 박사는 더 나아가, 거울뉴런의 확장을 통해 인류문명이 발달할 수 있었다고 봅니다. 예를 들어 부싯돌을 이용해 불을 피우는 아버지를 아들이 보고 모방함으로써, 기술의 전수가 가능해졌고 또한 기술의 전파가 가능해졌다는 것입니다. 본 강연엔 나오지 않습니다만, 인간의 언어 행동에 매우 중요한 영역인 '브로카 영역'도 위에서 언급한 'F5영역'의 상동기관이지요. 이렇게 인간은 거울작용과 언어를 통해 생물학적 지능을 넘어설 수 있게되었다는 것입니다.


비교적 짧은 7분 44초의 강연이지만, 이 짧은 강연 동안 한 개인은 타인과 완전히 구분할 수 없다는 사실을 느끼실 수 있을 것입니다.


그리고 이 강연과 관련하여 라마찬드란 박사가 쓴 에쎄이도 올리겠습니다. 번역해서 올리려고 했으나, 요새 시간이 없는 관계로 원문을 그대로 올릴게요..^^;;; 죄송..^^;;





MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution



[V.S. RAMACHANDRAN:] The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution — which I speculate on in this essay — is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.


There are many puzzling questions about the evolution of the human mind and brain:

1) The hominid brain reached almost its present size — and perhaps even its present intellectual capacity about 250,000 years ago . Yet many of the attributes we regard as uniquely human appeared only much later. Why? What was the brain doing during the long "incubation "period? Why did it have all this latent potential for tool use, fire, art music and perhaps even language- that blossomed only considerably later? How did these latent abilities emerge, given that natural selection can only select expressed abilities, not latent ones? I shall call this "Wallace's problem", after the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace who first proposed it.

2) Crude "Oldawan" tools — made by just a few blows to a core stone to create an irregular edge — emerged 2.4 million ago and were probably made by Homo Habilis whose brain size was half way (700cc) between modern humans (1300) and chimps (400). After another million years of evolutionary stasis aesthetically pleasing "symmetrical" tools began to appear associated with a standardization of production technique and artifact form. These required switching from a hard hammer to a soft (wooden?) hammer while the tool was being made, in order to ensure a smooth rather than jagged, irregular edge. And lastly, the invention of stereotyped "assembly line" tools (sophisticated symmetrical bifacial tools) that were hafted to a handle, took place only 200,000 years ago. Why was the evolution of the human mind "punctuated" by these relatively sudden upheavals of technological change?

3) Why the sudden explosion (often called the "great leap" ) in technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings, etc. around 40 thousand years ago, even though the brain had achieved its present "modern" size almost a million years earlier?

4) Did language appear completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or did it evolve from a more primitive gestural language that was already in place?

5) Humans are often called the "Machiavellian Primate" referring to our ability to "read minds" in order to predict other peoples' behavior and outsmart them. Why are apes and humans so good at reading other individuals' intentions? Do higher primates have a specialized brain center or module for generating a "theory of other minds" as proposed by Nick Humphrey and Simon Baron-Cohen? If so, where is this circuit and how and when did it evolve?

The solution to many of these riddles comes from an unlikely source.. the study of single neurons in the brains of monkeys. I suggest that the questions become less puzzling when you consider Giaccamo Rizzollati's recent discovery of "mirror neurons' in the ventral premotor area of monkeys. This cluster of neurons, I argue, holds the key to understanding many enigmatic aspects of human evolution. Rizzollati and Arbib have already pointed out the relevance of their discovery to language evolution . But I believe the significance of their findings for understanding other equally important aspects of human evolution has been largely overlooked. This, in my view, is the most important unreported "story" in the last decade.


THE EMERGENCE OF LANGUAGE

Unlike many other human traits such as humor, art, dancing or music the survival value of language is obvious — it helps us communicate our thoughts and intentions. But the question of how such an extraordinary ability might have actually evolved has puzzled biologists, psychologists and philosophers at least since the time of Charles Darwin. The problem is that the human vocal apparatus is vastly more sophisticated than that of any ape but without the correspondingly sophisticated language areas in the brain the vocal equipment alone would be useless. So how did these two mechanisms with so many sophisticated interlocking parts evolve in tandem? Following Darwin's lead I suggest that our vocal equipment and our remarkable ability to modulate voice evolved mainly for producing emotional calls and musical sounds during courtship ("croonin a toon."). Once that evolved then the brain — especially the left hemisphere — could evolve language.

But a bigger puzzle remains. Is language mediated by a sophisticated and highly specialized "language organ" that is unique to humans and emerged completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or was there a more primitive gestural communication system already in place that provided a scaffolding for the emergence of vocal language?

Rizzolatti's discovery can help us solve this age-old puzzle. He recorded from the ventral premotor area of the frontal lobes of monkeys and found that certain cells will fire when a monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, grasping, picking up and putting a peanut in the mouth etc. different neurons fire in response to different actions. One might be tempted to think that these are motor "command" neurons, making muscles do certain things; however, the astonishing truth is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action, e.g. tasting a peanut! With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: "mind reading" empathy, imitation learning, and even the evolution of language. Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds." (I suggest, also, that a loss of these mirror neurons may explain autism — a cruel disease that afflicts children. Without these neurons the child can no longer understand or empathize with other people emotionally and therefore completely withdraws from the world socially.)

Mirror neurons can also enable you to imitate the movements of others thereby setting the stage for the complex Lamarckian or cultural inheritance that characterizes our species and liberates us from the constraints of a purely gene based evolution. Moreover, as Rizzolati has noted, these neurons may also enable you to mime — and possibly understand — the lip and tongue movements of others which, in turn, could provide the opportunity for language to evolve. (This is why, when you stick your tongue out at a new born baby it will reciprocate! How ironic and poignant that this little gesture encapsulates a half a million years of primate brain evolution.) Once you have these two abilities in place the ability to read someone's intentions and the ability to mime their vocalizations then you have set in motion the evolution of language. You need no longer speak of a unique language organ and the problem doesn't seem quite so mysterious any more.

(Another important piece of the puzzle is Rizzolatti's observation that the ventral premotor area may be a homologue of the "Broca's area" — a brain center associated with the expressive and syntactic aspects of language in humans).

These arguments do not in any way negate the idea that there are specialized brain areas for language in humans. We are dealing, here, with the question of how such areas may have evolved, not whether they exist or not.

Mirror neurons were discovered in monkeys but how do we know they exist in the human brain? To find out we studied patients with a strange disorder called anosognosia. Most patients with a right hemisphere stroke have complete paralysis of the left side of their body and will complain about it, as expected. But about 5% of them will vehemently deny their paralysis even though they are mentally otherwise lucid and intelligent. This is the so called "denial" syndrome or anosognosia. To our amazement, we found that some of these patients not only denied their own paralysis, but also denied the paralysis of another patient whose inability to move his arm was clearly visible to them and to others. Denying ones one paralysis is odd enough but why would a patient deny another patient's paralysis? We suggest that this bizarre observation is best understood in terms of damage to Rizzolatti's mirror neurons. It's as if anytime you want to make a judgement about someone else's movements you have to run a VR (virtual reality) simulation of the corresponding movements in your own brain and without mirror neurons you cannot do this .

The second piece of evidence comes from studying brain waves (EEG) in humans. When people move their hands a brain wave called the MU wave gets blocked and disappears completely. Eric Altschuller, Jamie Pineda, and I suggested at the Society for Neurosciences in 1998 that this suppression was caused by Rizzolati's mirror neuron system. Consistent with this theory we found that such a suppression also occurs when a person watches someone else moving his hand but not if he watches a similar movement by an inanimate object. (We predict that children with autism should show suppression if they move their own hands but not if they watch some one else. Our lab now has preliminary hints from one highly functioning autistic child that this might be true (Social Neuroscience Abstracts 2000).


THE BIG BANG OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

The hominid brain grew at an accelerating pace until it reached its present size of 1500cc about 200,000 years ago. Yet uniquely human abilities such the invention of highly sophisticated "standardized" multi- part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language are thought to have emerged quite rapidly around 40,000 years ago — a sudden explosion of human mental abilities and culture that is sometimes called the "big bang." If the brain reached its full human potential — or at least size — 200,000 years ago why did it remain idle for 150,000 years? Most scholars are convinced that the big bang occurred because of some unknown genetic change in brain structure. For instance, the archeologist Steve Mithen has just written a book in which he claims that before the big bang there were three different brain modules in the human brain that were specialized for "social or machiavellian intelligence", for "mechanical intelligence" or tool use, and for "natural history" (a propensity to classify). These three modules remained isolated from each other but around 50,000 years ago some genetic change in the brain suddenly allowed them to communicate with each other, resulting in the enormous flexibility and versatility of human consciousness.

I disagree with Mithen ingenious suggestion and offer a very different solution to the problem. (This is not incompatible with Mithen's view but its a different idea). I suggest that the so-called big bang occurred because certain critical environmental triggers acted on a brain that had already become big for some other reason and was therefore "pre-adapted" for those cultural innovations that make us uniquely human. (One of the key pre adaptations being mirror neurons.) Inventions like tool use, art, math and even aspects of language may have been invented "accidentally" in one place and then spread very quickly given the human brain's amazing capacity for imitation learning and mind reading using mirror neurons. Perhaps ANY major "innovation" happens because of a fortuitous coincidence of environmental circumstances — usually at a single place and time. But given our species' remarkable propensity for miming, such an invention would tend to spread very quickly through the population — once it emerged.

Mirror neurons obviously cannot be the only answer to all these riddles of evolution. After all rhesus monkeys and apes have them, yet they lack the cultural sophistication of humans (although it has recently been shown that chimps at least DO have the rudiments of culture, even in the wild). I would argue, though, that mirror neurons are Necessary but not sufficient: their emergence and further development in hominids was a decisive step. The reason is that once you have a certain minimum amount of "imitation learning" and "culture" in place, this culture can, in turn, exert the selection pressure for developing those additional mental traits that make us human . And once this starts happening you have set in motion the auto-catalytic process that culminated in modern human consciousness.

A second problem with my suggestion is that it doesn't explain why the many human innovations that constitute the big bang occurred during a relatively short period. If its simply a matter of chance discoveries spreading rapidly,why would all of them have occurred at the same time? There are three answers to this objection. First,the evidence that it all took place at the same time is tenuous. The invention of music, shelters,hafted tools, tailored clothing, writing, speech, etc. may have been spread out between 100K and 5k and the so-called great leap may be a sampling artifact of archeological excavation. Second, any given innovation (e.g. speech or writing or tools) may have served as a catalyst for the others and may have therefore accelerated the pace of culture as a whole. And third, there may indeed have been a genetic change,b ut it may not have been an increase in the ability to innovate ( nor a breakdown of barriers between modules as suggested by Mithen) but an increase in the sophistication of the mirror neuron system and therefore in "learnability." The resulting increase in ability to imitate and learn (and teach) would then explain the explosion of cultural change that we call the "great leap forward" or the "big bang" in human evolution. This argument implies that the whole "nature-nurture debate" is largely meaningless as far as human are concerned. Without the genetically specified learnability that characterizes the human brain Homo sapiens wouldn't deserve the title "sapiens" (wise) but without being immersed in a culture that can take advantage of this learnability, the title would be equally inappropriate. In this sense human culture and human brain have co-evolved into obligatory mutual parasites — without either the result would not be a human being. (No more than you can have a cell without its parasitic mitochondria).


THE SECOND BIG BANG

My suggestion that these neurons provided the initial impetus for "runaway" brain/ culture co-evolution in humans, isn't quite as bizarre as it sounds. Imagine a martian anthropologist was studying human evolution a million years from now. He would be puzzled (like Wallace was) by the relatively sudden emergence of certain mental traits like sophisticated tool use, use of fire, art and "culture" and would try to correlate them (as many anthropologists now do) with purported changes in brain size and anatomy caused by mutations. But unlike them he would also be puzzled by the enormous upheavals and changes that occurred after (say) 19th century — what we call the scientific/industrial revolution. This revolution is, in many ways, much more dramatic (e.g. the sudden emergence of nuclear power, automobiles, air travel, and space travel) than the "great leap forward" that happened 40,000 years ago!!

He might be tempted to argue that there must have been a genetic change and corresponding change in brain anatomy and behavior to account for this second leap forward. (Just as many anthropologists today seek a genetic explanation for the first one.) Yet we know that present one occurred exclusively because of fortuitous environmental circumstances, because Galileo invented the "experimental method," that, together with royal patronage and the invention of the printing press, kicked off the scientific revolution. His experiments and the earlier invention of a sophisticated new language called mathematics in India in the first millennium AD (based on place value notation, zero and the decimal system), set the stage for Newtonian mechanics and the calculus and "the rest is history" as we say.

Now the thing to bear in mind is that none of this need have happened. It certainly did not happen because of a genetic change in the human brains during the renaissance. It happened at least partly because of imitation learning and rapid "cultural" transmission of knowledge. (Indeed one could almost argue that there was a greater behavioral/cognitive difference between pre-18th century and post 20th century humans than between Homo Erectus and archaic Homo Sapiens. Unless he knew better our Martian ethologist may conclude that there was a bigger genetic difference between the first two groups than the latter two species!)

Based on this analogy I suggest, further, that even the first great leap forward was made possible largely by imitation and emulation. Wallace's question was perfectly sensible; it is very puzzling how a set of extraordinary abilities seemed to emerge "out of the blue". But his solution was wrong...the apparently sudden emergence of things like art or sophisticated tools was not because of God or "divine intervention". I would argue instead that just as a single invention (or two) by Galileo and Gutenberg quickly spread and transformed the surface of the globe (although there was no preceding genetic change), inventions like fire, tailored clothes, "symmetrical tools", and art, etc. may have fortuitously emerged in a single place and then spread very quickly. Such inventions may have been made by earlier hominids too (even chimps and orangs are remarkably inventive...who knows how inventive Homo Erectus or Neandertals were) but early hominids simply may not have had an advanced enough mirror neuron system to allow a rapid transmission and dissemination of ideas. So the ideas quickly drop out of the "meme pool". This system of cells, once it became sophisticated enough to be harnessed for "training" in tool use and for reading other hominids minds, may have played the same pivotal role in the emergence of human consciousness (and replacement of Neandertals by Homo Sapiens) as the asteroid impact did in the triumph of mammals over reptiles.

So it makes no more sense to ask "Why did sophisticated tool use and art emerge only 40,000 years ago even though the brain had all the required latent ability 100,000 years earlier?" — than to ask "Why did space travel occur only a few decades ago, even though our brains were preadapted for space travel at least as far back Cro Magnons?". The question ignores the important role of contingency or plain old luck in human evolutionary history.

Thus I regard Rizzolati's discovery — and my purely speculative conjectures on their key role in our evolution — as the most important unreported story of the last decade.

[기억의式]

확실히 뇌는 재미있네요. 강연을 듣고보니 예전에 "지능수치가 많이 차이나는 두 아이가 같이 자리에 앉아서 공부를 하는데, 일정 시간 후 시험을 쳐 보니 둘 다 비슷한 성적이 나왔다"는 글을 읽은적이 있습니다. 과학뿐만 아니라 미스테리나 초자연 현상에 관심이 많았던 중학생 때 읽었던 글이라 이게 과학 아티클인지 세상에 이런일이 부류에서 읽은 건지 기억이 잘 안나는데요. 어쨌든 지금까지는 그게 미스테리 찌라시에서 나온 사기라고 막연히 생각했는데 지금 강연을 보고나니 어쩌면 실제 그런 실험 결과가 있었을지도 모른다는 생각이 듭니다.
만일 그런 실험 결과가 사실이라면, 공감의 능력은 어디까지인지 좀 오싹해 지는군요.

[메디치]

흠... 정확히 거울뉴런에 의한 것인지는 모르겠습니다만, 같은 자리에서 공부를 함으로써 둘의 성적이 비슷해졌다는 것은 좀 신빙성이 있는 것 같습니다. 시험 전에 수험자 각자에게 주는 이미지가 성적에 상당한 영향을 미치니깐요.

어쨌건, 거울뉴런의 역할은 한계가 존재합니다. 거울작용은 '인지'에 머무르며 '감각'까지 이어지는건 아니지요. 위에서 인용한 부상병 사례가 그 경우에요. 우리도 '곶아 인증 동영상'을 보면 아랫도리가 움찔해지는데(거울뉴런의 작용에 의해), 그 고통이 그대로 전이되지는 않는 것처럼요.

[Pezhetairoi]

주관적인 견해이긴 합니다만;; 지적능력이라는 것도 문제 해결하는 있어 효율적인 방법을 찾아내는 능력(방향성)이 아닐까요?? 사소하고 무의식적인 범위에서부터 공감이 일어난다면 위와 같은 결과도 충분히 가능하지 않을까싶네요~

[임용관]

대표적인 거울작용 : 난폭운전하는 친구 옆 자리에 타보세요. 나중에 내릴때 오른쪽 다리에 쥐가 나 있습니다.

[고기]

얏옹보고 학학학 하는 것도 이런건가요?-_-;

[메디치]

글쎄요... 그건 잘 모르겠습니다..ㅎㅎ;;; 거울뉴런이란게 뇌에 특정한 곳에 위치한 특정기관이 아니라, 두뇌 여러 곳에서 발현되는 체계라서요..

예를 들어 혐오스러운 감정을 일으키는 감정 중추가 '섬피질'인데.. 섬피질은 분명히 거울뉴런인지라, 영상 속 인물이 혐오스러운 장면을 보고서 구토하려는 것을 보고서도 영상을 보는 사람의 섬피질이 발화됩니다. 섬피질에 손상을 입은 사람은 혐오감이 약화될 뿐만 아니라(벌레있는 음식에도 혐오감 없음), 타인이 혐오감을 느낀다는걸 인지하지 못하지요..

성적감정을 불러일으키는 감정중추도 거울뉴런에 속하는지는 모르겠습니다. 지금 현재 연구가 진행되고 있는 부분이기도 하고,

[메디치]

무엇보다도 저 스스로도 학자들의 연구결과를 충분히 안다고 할 수 없으니깐요...^^;;; 그럼에도 얏옹보고 학학학하는데에 거울뉴런이 관여했을 가능성이 상당할 것 같네요..ㅎㅎ

어쨌건, 거울뉴런이 관여한 것이 확실해 보이는게, 신생아실에서 한 아기가 울 때, 다른 아기들도 같이 우는 것, 아기가 엄마표정 따라하는것(이건 사진으로 올리려는데 엑박뜨네요...ㅡㅡ), 곶아인증 동영상을 보고 아랫도리가 아려오는 것 등이 있겠네요.. 방 안에서 한 사람이 하품할 때, 다른 사람들도 하품을 하는 것도 거울뉴런이 관여하는 것이란 주장도 있구요..

[오로쿠트]

맞다고 들었습니다. 물론 저도 인문계라 주워들은 거지만 ㅡ,.ㅡ;;

[havoc]

근묵자흑은 과학적으로 증명되는건가....하앍하앍...;;;

[Che_GueVaRa]

흠... 이 건 어떤 사상이 어느 시대에 급속도로 번지게 되는 역사의 현상을 설명하는 문제와 연관지어 생각해볼 수 있지 않을까요?? 예를 들어 프랑스의 자연주의 문예사조같은 것들이요. 음.. 모파상, 에밀 졸라 같은 사람들이 자연주의 사조로 들어갑니다. 또 르네상스 시기에 갑자기 그렇게 위대한 예술가들이 동시대에 집중되었다는 것도 설명할 수 있을까요??

[Che_GueVaRa]

그 외에도 위 얃옹 얘기처럼, 생활 속 주변에서 찾는다면 잘 만든 드라마같은 거 보면서 사람들이 공감하는 현상은 예시로서 어떨런지. 최근에 방영이 끝났던 '추노'의 결말을 보면서 많은 이들이 눈물을 흘렸던 야그들 같은 거요....


제가 말씀드린 게 메디치님이 올린 자료의 예시가 되나는 잘 모르겠습니다만,

저 자신은 위의 강연을 보고 그런 것들을 생각해보았습니다.

좋은 자료 감사합니다. 꾸벅.앞으로도 계속 꾸준히 활동해주시길 바랍니다. 그럼 이만.

[메디치]

넵. 추노를 보고서 같이 감동을 느끼는 것에 거울뉴런도 관여를 합니다. 물론, 전적으로 거울뉴런에 의한 것은 아니지만요..ㅎㅎ 그리고, 사조의 변동에 대해서도 분명히 거울뉴런이 관여할 것이라고 생각할 수 있지만, 이게 모든 현상의 단 한가지 원인이 될 수는 없지요..ㅎㅎ 갑자기 사조가 변동되게 되는 것에 대해서는 말콤 글래드웰의 <티핑 포인트>가 괜찮은 책일 것 같습니다(뭐 저는 아직 읽지는 못했습니다만..)