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I read two articles in Scientific American that discuss neurons in the brain called mirror neurons. These neurons fire during the completion of an action, but they also fire when one person observes another carrying out the same action, hence the name mirror neurons. The fact that the same pathways in your brain "light up" in response to an action, whether you are the one carrying it out or you are simply watching someone else do it, means that regardless, you are experiencing the action in the same way. The discovery of these mirror neurons leads to many questions about how we actually "understand" people, and where our capabilities for empathy come from. For example, let's say you watch someone else go through a series of actions, and from what they do, you make a conclusion about what the end result of their actions will be (someone at breakfast grabs a bowl and a spoon and starts to walk towards the cereals: you make the conclusion that they're going to have cereal for breakfast): how do you know this is what they're going to do? Previously, I would have suggested that the conclusion came from a series of logic processes in the brain, combined with memories of prior, similar situations, and that the conclusion drawn was nothing more than the most reasonable explanation. With the addition of mirror neurons, however, the process of understanding another's actions becomes a much more experiential activity: your brain actually goes through the process of picking up the bowl and spoon and walking over to the cereals. Further studies are suggesting that not only do these neurons play a role in reading and understanding another's actions, but also in interpreting their motives, a much deeper psychological study. What I find the most interesting, however, is that understanding via these neurons is not restricted to actions: experiments are also linking them to emotions and empathy.

Empathy feels like a gut reaction, something that pulls at your core: when you feel for someone else, it can seem like you've connected on a new and deeper level, as if the primordial human-to-human connection has been tapped and you're speaking to each other with such clarity that speech seems as eloquent as grunts and gestures. As it turns out, there is a neurological component to this gut reaction which may explain why this connection feels so strong. As with actions, when you see someone experience pain or joy or sadness, you neurologically feel the same emotions (or at least the emotion that your brain perceives the other to be experiencing), insofar as mirror neurons are concerned. And so empathy, for all that it is a very "human" trait, does have some foundation in strictly neurological processes.

As far as the brain vs. soul debate goes, this research would seem to support the "brain" side, but it's only another small piece of what we know of our selves and how they work. How much does it really matter whether we are all soul or all neurobiological processes? Does the final answer have any sway on how, say, an emotion feels to us? Maybe I'd feel a little funny crying over a chemical reaction in my brain, but sadness still feels sad no matter how you define it.