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ISSN 2164-1668. 2 NONSITE.ORG - ISSUE #5: AGENCY AND EXPERIENCE (SPRING 2012) ISSUE #5:AGENCY AND EXPERIENCE SPRING 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS ARTICLES “Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula”: Mirror Neuron Theory and Emotional Empathy . 8 Ruth Leys Passive and Active Skepticism in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place . 32 Robert Pippin Sala with Schiller: World, Form, and Play in Mixed Behavior . 58 Michael Fried FEATURES Different Facets of Analytic Cubism . 80 Lisa Florman RESPONSES Charles Altieri on Jami Bartlett, Jennifer Ashton, and John Gibson . 114 Charles Altieri Robert Pippin on Oren Izenberg and Paul Grimstad . 130 Robert Pippin REVIEWS Picasso and the Vital Order . 142 Kevin Chua The Aesthetic Politics of AffeCt . 154 Todd Cronan 4 NONSITE.ORG - ISSUE #5: AGENCY AND EXPERIENCE (SPRING 2012) ARTICLES ARTICLES 6 NONSITE.ORG - ISSUE #5: AGENCY AND EXPERIENCE (SPRING 2012) ARTICLES “BOTH OF US DISGUSTED IN MY INSULA”: MIRROR NEURON THEORY AND EMOTIONAL EMPATHY RUTH LEYS In a report of the results of an experiment pertaining to a common neural basis for seeing and feeling the emotion of disgust, the claim is made that, just as we have mirror-neuron mechanisms for understanding other people’s intentional actions, so we have mirror-neuron mechanisms for understanding or empathizing with other people’s emotions. The article was published in 2003 by a group of scientists that included first-author Bruno Wicker and co- authors Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese, the last two being well known as members of the research team that discovered mirror neurons in monkeys. I consider their paper a telling example of what can go wrong in emotion research today, and in the following discussion I shall try to say why. 1 A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal enacts a movement and when that animal merely observes the same action by another (especially a con-specific). In other words, mirror neurons appear to “mirror” the behavior of another animal by a kind of 8 RUTH LEYS - “BOTH OF US DISGUSTED IN MY INSULA”: MIRROR NEURON THEORY AND EMOTIONAL EMPATHY motor simulation or motoric resonance. Mirror neurons were first detected in the 1990s in experiments using electrodes directly implanted in the pre-motor cortex of the macaque monkey. Although mirror neurons are often assumed to exist in humans and other species, the evidence is scant. 2 In humans, for example, the only published direct evidence of mirror neuron activity exists in the form of single-neuron electrode recordings from the brains of epileptic patients and even that evidence is equivocal. 3 From the start, the function of mirror neurons has been the topic of much speculation and controversy. Many researchers have claimed that mirror neurons provide a mechanism for an animal’s ability to grasp the motor-intentional actions of others without the intervention of higher cognitive or sensory processes. Dysfunction in the mirror neuron system is also thought to explain mind-reading failures associated with autism. Gallese and art historian David Freedberg have recently applied the idea of mirror neurons to the field of neuroaesthetics by claiming that our empathic responses to works of art as well as to everyday images depend on the activation of embodied, non-cognitive mirror-neuron mechanisms. 4 Freedberg and Gallese thus follow the trend in the neurosciences to expand the role of mirror neurons to include the capacity for emotional empathy. 5 In their 2003 article, Wicker and his group described the results of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study in which experimental subjects were asked to inhale odorants selected to produce strong feelings of disgust. The same subjects were also asked to observe video clips of other individuals exhibiting or showing the facial expression of disgust. The scientists reported that the same sites in the anterior insula (and to a lesser extent in the anterior cingulate cortex) were activated both when the experimental subjects themselves experienced disgust and when they observed the filmed expressions of disgust on the faces of others. 6 The researchers therefore concluded in reference to the mirror- neuron matching system that, “just as observing hand actions activates the observer’s motor representation of that action, observing an emotion activates the neural representation of that emotion. This finding provides a unifying mechanism for understanding the behavior of others” (“BUD,” 655). The study by Wicker and his team has generated considerable interest in the neuroscientific community (a recent Google search indicates that the paper has now been cited in over 900 research articles). In subsequent publications, Rizzolatti, Gallese, Keysers and others have cited Wicker et al.’s experiment on disgust as confirming the idea that there is a common neural basis for emotional empathy. 7 The experiment by Wicker and his group has also provided confirming evidence for Alvin I. Goldman’s influential approach to the “problem of other minds.” In his 2006 book, Simulating Minds, Goldman begins his review of the empirical evidence supportive of his Simulation Theory of mindreading by focusing on the “low-level” task of recognizing the emotional expressions of others because, as he 9 NONSITE.ORG - ISSUE #5: AGENCY AND EXPERIENCE (SPRING 2012) ARTICLES observes with reference to the findings of Wicker et al. and those of others, the case for simulation here is “very substantial.” 8 The Wicker Experiment In Detail Let me begin by providing some details about the Wicker experiment. First, the experimenters recruited from a Marseille theater school six actors (male and female) who agreed to be filmed while smelling either neutral, or pleasant, or unpleasant odors. The actors were presented with a glass containing either pure water (for the neutral expression), water with an added pleasant odor (perfume designed to produce the pleased expression), or water with an added unpleasant odor (the content of “stinking balls” from a local toy store designed to induce the disgust expression). The actors were asked to display the relevant emotional reactions in a “natural but clear way.” Each emotional reaction was filmed three times for each actor, and the “most natural example” was selected by one of the experimenters. These filmed enactments served as the visual “stimuli” for the experiment that followed. The experiment itself was conducted with fourteen males, each of whom was asked to participate in two “visual runs” and two “olfactory runs” while undergoing fMRI. In the “visual runs” the participants passively viewed the film clips that had been made of the actors smelling the contents of the glass.