Neurobiology and its Applications to Psychotherapy

Empathic bodily selves in relation: from mirror neurons to embodied simulation

Vittorio Gallese explains how the discovery of a mirror mechanism reveals an embodied approach to understanding the other. He terms this Embodied Simulation (ES). ES provides a new empirically-based notion of inter-subjectivity viewed first and foremost as intercorporeity – the main source of knowledge we directly gather about others is embodied. By means of ES we do not just “see” an action, an emotion, or a sensation and then understand it through an inference by analogy. We map others’ actions by re-using our own motor representations. ES provides an original and unitary account of basic aspects of intersubjectivity, demonstrating how deeply our making sense of others’ living and acting bodies is rooted in the power of re-using our own motor, emotional and somatosensory resources.