The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy by Louis Cozolino

Author:Louis Cozolino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2002-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

Sensory, Motor, and Affective Systems

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

—Leonardo da Vinci

It is in the temporal lobes that our senses are integrated, organized, and combined with primitive drives and emotional significance in a “vertical” linkup across all three levels of the triune brain (Adams, Victor, & Ropper, 1997). For example, the recognition of faces and reading their expressions occurs in the top-down networks. Cells involved in both reading and identifying facial expressions are located in adjacent areas of the temporal lobes (Desimone, 1991; Hasselmo, Rolls, & Baylis, 1989). When we see faces, the areas of the brain that become activated lie in a processing stream dedicated to the identification of visual stimuli (Lu et al., 1991). The association region of the occipital lobe dedicated to the identification of faces is the fusiform face area (Gauthier et al., 2000; Halgren et al., 1999). These areas, in turn, are interconnected with other clusters of cells that are responsible for eye gaze, body posture, and facial expression as the brain constructs complex perceptions and social judgments from basic building blocks of visual information (Jellema, Baker, Wicker, & Perrett, 2000).

Regions in the anterior (front) portions of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) integrate information about various aspects of the same person (form, location, and motion), allowing us to identify others from different angles, in various places, and while they are in motion (Jellema, Maassen, & Perrett, 2004; Pelphrey et al., 2003; Vaina et al., 2001). The STS also contains mirror neurons, which activate either when we witness others engaging in behaviors or when we ourselves subsequently engage in these actions. By bridging neural networks dedicated to perception and movement, mirror neurons connect the observed and the observer by linking visual and motor experience. Resonance behaviors (based on mirror systems) are the reflexive imitation responses we make when interacting with others. It is hypothesized that mirror systems and resonance behaviors provide us with a visceral-emotional experience of what the other is experiencing, allowing us to know others from the inside out.

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