Sans for dyr
"Our study shows that neurons in the human amygdala respond preferentially to pictures of animals, meaning that we saw the most amount of activity in cells when the patients looked at cats or snakes versus buildings or people," says Florian Mormann, lead author on the paper and a former postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Biology at Caltech. "This preference extends to cute as well as ugly or dangerous animals and appears to be independent of the emotional contents of the pictures. Remarkably, we find this response behavior only in the right and not in the left amygdala."Mormann says this striking hemispheric asymmetry helps strengthen previous findings supporting the idea that, early on in vertebrate evolution, the right hemisphere became specialized in dealing with unexpected and biologically relevant stimuli, or with changes in the environment. "In terms of brain evolution, the amygdala is a very old structure, and throughout our biological history, animals -- which could represent either predators or prey -- were a highly relevant class of stimuli," he says.
For mig giver det en aha-oplevelse i forhold til at jeg aldrig har forstået hvordan dedikerede dyrevenner og -aktivister tilsyneladende er mere optaget af dyrs velfærd end af menneskers. Her får jeg måske noget af forklaringen.
It seems as if our brain is built for mirroring, and that only through mirroring - through the simulation in our brain of the felt experience of other minds - do we deeply understand what other people ar feeling.