Motivation

7. Theoretical Foundations

People used to think that babies were born without empathy. But that is simply not true. We are all wired for empathy; we just have to learn how to connect the wires to make it work. Empathy sits in the brain’s limbic system (vises grafisk). This controls memory, emotions, and instinct. It is a complicated neurological system involving mirror neurons and the insula. What many don’t realize is that we are biologically predisposed to connect to others. This is made possible through many neuronal systems that are embedded in the right hemisphere of the brain, the mirror neurons being an important aspect of this. The self is not an individual entity, you see, but a relational construct. There is a new field in brain science, social neuroscience that have found the circuitry in two people’s brains activates while they interact. And the latest thinking about empathy from social neuroscience is that our default wiring is to help. That is to say, if we attend to the other person, we automatically empathize, we automatically feel with them. These newly identified neurons, mirror neurons, act as a neuro Wi-Fi, activating in our brain exactly the areas activated in theirs. We feel “with” automatically. And if that person is in need, if that person is suffering, we are automatically prepared to help.