Space around others perceived ‘just as our own’
A study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has shown that neurons in our brain ‘mirror’ the space near others, just as if this was the space near ourselves.
The study, part-funded by the European Research Council and the Marie Curie Actions, sheds new light regarding the way in which the brain represents other people and the events that happens to those people. The research reveals that visual events occurring near a person’s own hand and those occurring near another’s hand are represented by the same region of the frontal lobe. Scientists say that it is possible that this shared representation of space could help individuals to interact more efficiently e.g. when shaking hands. It might also help us to understand intuitively when other people are at risk of getting hurt, for example when we see a friend about to be hit by a ball.
The authors discovered a region in the left premotor cortex that contained groups of neurons that responded to the object only if it was close to the individual’s own hand or close to the other person’s hand.
Speaking about the study’s results, lead author Claudio Brozzoli at the Karolinska Institutet said: “We usually experience others as clearly separated from us, occupying a very different portion of space. However, what this study shows is that we perceive the space around other people in the same way as we perceive the space around our own body.”
“We know from earlier studies that our brains represent the actions of other people using the same groups of neurons that represent our own actions; the so-called ‘mirror neuron system’. We found a new class of these kinds of neuronal populations that represent space near others just as they represent space near ourselves,” added Henrik Ehrsson, study co-author.
The investigation is published in the scientific journal Current Biology.
