By DEBORAH STAMBLER | Contributing Writer
Neuroscientist Dr. Marco Iacoboni offered unique insights into the brain as the guest speaker at a St. John’s Physician Alumni Association (SPJAA) lunch at The Riviera Country Club on Jan. 14.
The SJPAA meets quarterly, bringing together past and current physicians from Providence St. John’s Health Center for continued fellowship and education.
Iacoboni is a professor in UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and director of the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab.
In his presentation for the SJPAA, he discussed human empathy and pro-social behavior, the discovery and continued study of mirror neurons and some hopeful outcomes from this work.
Iacoboni defines empathy as “trying to get a clue to the emotional state of someone else and then [trying] to help that person if he needs help.”
This is the simple definition for complex emotional and cognitive states that continually interact with each other in different centers of the brain.
He discussed different ways that empathy plays out in daily life from the surgeon caring for a patient to a mother and child.
Regarding a complex issue such as homelessness, Iacoboni said, “The best way to have empathy in these situations is to remind ourselves that they are human beings and not just focus on the differences between us.”
He talked about empathy in terms of our humanity and emphasized that we are social animals.
More on his work can be found in his book “Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others.”
Iacoboni and his team are part of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center. He said they are currently “spending a lot of time trying to figure out the basic mechanism of the emotional contagion of empathy and how to control it.”
Iacoboni discussed prospects for dealing with conditions such as schizophrenia, depression and other mental health disorders.
The presentation was followed by a lively Q&A that covered autism, gun control, politics and even advertising.
Dr. Dan Borenstein and Palisades resident Dr. Susan Reynolds serve on the executive committee of SJPAA and work alongside SJPAA President Dr. Robert K. Gray to organize the program.
The next luncheon is scheduled for March with a talk on brain imaging and aging in Alzheimer’s disease by Dr. Susan Bookheimer.
More information on SJPAA can be found on the St. John’s website at http://bit.ly/StJohnsPAA.
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