Mirror Neurons and empathy in Schizophrenic patients
Empathy is the ability to understand others' thoughts and feelings from their point of view. As a skill, it facilitates prosocial behavior and compassion among individuals. According to the American Psychiatric Association (1994), schizophrenia is marked by impairment in social functioning and this may include an empathy deficit. Empathy allows an individual to understand others in social interaction by allowing them to represent or stimulate other people’s thoughts and feelings within the self.
Mirror Neurons
Have you ever noticed you start crying after watching your favorite character cry? It is not like what is happening to the characters in the movie is happening to you but yet you still end up crying. The Mirror Neurons are responsible for this. Giacomo Rizzolatti proposed the idea of mirror neurons, which are specific types of brain cells that react similarly when we carry out an action and when we see another person carry out the same action.
They were discovered in the brains of Macaque monkeys in the 1990s by Italian researchers who found specific neurons that fired when the monkeys grasped an object and when they observed another monkey grabbing the same thing. We can comprehend and empathize with other people thanks to mirror neurons. People may have the same emotions whether performing an action or when watching one.
Research into mirror neurons will open up the possibility of biological interventions in the disorders mentioned above along with research into psychopathy which has been plaguing the prisons and is a vital field of research in forensic psychologyDr K Jayasankara Reddy, Professor, Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore, India
Empathy in schizophrenic patients and mirror neurons
Studies show that people with schizophrenia lack empathy because of emotional dysregulation. Researchers are trying to understand where this lack of empathy comes from and studies have directed this to the problems in mirror neurons. Very few studies have looked into the matter. One of the studies by Bora, Gokcen, and Veznedaroglu (2008) wanted to check the nature of empathy deficits in healthy participants and psychiatric participants. The researchers measured the performance of thirty outpatients with schizophrenia on the Empathy Quotient, which was compared to thirty control subjects matched for age, gender, and duration of education. The results showed that schizophrenic patients had severe empathy dysfunction. They were also impaired in mostly all cognitive tasks which were consistent with previous findings and this was related to a deficit in their empathy as well.
Another study by Shamay-Tsoory, Shur, Harari, and Levkovitz (2007) showed that patients with schizophrenia showed impaired emotional and social behavior. The purpose of the study was to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the ability to empathize in schizophrenia patients, as well as the correlation between empathy scores and performance on a cognitive flexibility test that measures dorsolateral and orbitofrontal functioning.
According to Baslet, Termini, and Herberner’s (2009) study, individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty anticipating others’ emotional responses in complex social situations, thus, indicating a lack of empathy. Studies on social cognition have focussed on the theory of mind, emotional processing, judgment, and empathy. While the theory of mind becomes a more cognitive aspect, empathy has both cognitive and affective components and is referred to as the capacity of recognizing and sharing the feelings experienced by another. Since the discovery of mirror neurons, researchers have looked into examining the role of mirror neurons in the emotional domain and especially with empathy. Patients with schizophrenia show emotional dysfunction and this may be related to structural and functional deficits in the mirror neuron system and imitation network (McCormick et al., 2012).
The study by McCormick et al. (2012) measured empathy and mirror neuron activity using an established EEG paradigm assessing the integrity of the Mu rhythm suppression over the sensorimotor cortex among sixteen schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in the experimental group and sixteen healthy individuals in the control group matched with age and gender. Results showed that greater Mu Rhythm suppression showed higher mirror neuron activity among subjects with greater severity of psychotic symptoms. Schizophrenic patients also had significantly higher levels of personal distress than healthy participants. The study stated that abnormal mirror neuron activity may exist among patients with schizophrenia during the active (psychotic) phase of the illness.
Mirror neurons are helpful in understanding self and others' boundaries but when there is a defect in them, then people may show psychotic symptoms. For instance, people with schizophrenia, often end up making false interpretations of others’ intentions which results in a misperception of social cues among the said population as threats and hallucinations. Previous studies using various neuroimaging methods show that people with schizophrenia have reduced mirror neuron activity which may relate to a lower ability to distinguish between actions of self and others. Thus, altered empathy and social cognition are the reason for psychosis. However, other studies say that the theory of mind or ability to empathize is necessary for the development of psychosis.
The research done in the field of mirror neurons is unique and there has to be more research done to get substantial results, however, from whatever has been done, we know that mirror neurons do play a role when related to empathy, language development, autism and theory of mind.