Sublime

Neurologists have discovered that when emotions and feelings are impaired, we actually lose the ability to make decisions.

The internal maps created by mirror neurons are automatic—they do not require consciousness or effort. We are hardwired from birth to detect sequences and make maps in our brains of the internal state—the intentional stance—of other people.

For example, there is a delay of at least two to five seconds between activation of neurons and the increase in oxygen-rich blood flowing to them.

At the beginning of the 1990’s, colleagues of mine in Parma, Italy, discovered some special brain cells they coined “mirror neurons,” which dramatically changed the way we look not only at the brain, but also our understanding of social interactions.

Many neuroscientists are empiricists: together, with the English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), they presume that the brain simply draws its

Only a mobile creature needs a brain, points out New York University neurophysiologist Rodolfo Llinás in his 2002 book, I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self.

It was the relational aspect of humans—i.e., “human relationality”—that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationsh