An outright majority, 52 percent, said there was no political party in Israel whose leaders were not tainted by corruption. Seven percent said that the leaders of the far-right National Union-National Religious Party were not corrupt, while an equal percentage believes that the leadership of the far-left Meretz Party is untainted by corruption. Five percent said that Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party was not corrupt, while an equal percentage said the same about the leaders of the Pensioner's Party.
Only three percent said the leaders of the Labor Party were not corrupt, while a mere one percent said the leaders of the ruling Kadima Party were not tainted by corruption, the survey found. Sixty-five percent of those polled said that the bribery suspicions involving senior tax authority officials are well founded, while 18 percent said the opposite.
I'm not even relating the daily press "leaks" of improprieties related to Tziniut regarding our heretofore "most trusted" leaders (frum and non-frum alike)!
Aside from the obvious distaste for this abuse of the law and, no less so, our misplaced trust in our leaders to do their jobs effectively and efficiently, how else are we, the public, affected?
An interesting phenomenon in which to understand our general distaste and possible fear of "the non-trustworthy" may be gleaned from recent research in the area of Neuroscience. In this area of brain-behavior research, scientists are studying the emergent area of "Mirror Neurons," or to use Sandra Blakeslee's article titled, "Cells That Read Minds" (see The New York Times, Jan. 10, 2006).
This discovery happened like many others - accidentally. But the persons seeing the "behavior" were neuroscientists, who were prescient enough to understand that what they were observing was a key to understanding human behavior. Examples: empathy, philosophy, language, imitation, autism and even psychotherapy.
One summer day 15 years ago in Parma, Italy, a monkey sat in a special laboratory chair waiting for researchers to return from lunch. Thin wires had been implanted in the region of its brain involved in planning and carrying out movements.
A graduate student entered the lab with an ice cream cone in his hand. The monkey stared at him. Then, something amazing happened. When the student raised the cone to his lips, the monitor sounded; and even though the monkey had not moved but had simply observed the student grasping the cone and moving it to his mouth, the area of its brain responsible for these actions "mirrored" them, as if the monkey himself had an ice cream cone in its hand.
Iaccomo Rizzolati and Vittorio Gallasse discovered mirror neurons. They found that neurons in the ventral pre-motor area of macaque monkeys will fire any time a monkey performs a complex action, such as reaching for a peanut, pulling a lever, pushing a door, etc. (Different neurons fire for different actions.) Most of these neurons control motor skill (originally discovered by Vernon Mountcastle in the '60's), but a subset of them, the Italians found, will fire even when the monkey watches another monkey perform the same action. In essence, the neuron is part of a network that allows you to see the world "from the other person's point of view." Hence the name, "mirror neuron."
"It took us several years to believe what we were seeing," Dr. Rizzolati said in a recent interview. The monkey brain contains a special class of cells, called mirror neurons, that fire when the animal sees or hears an action, and when the animal carries out the same action on its own. But if the findings, published in 1996, surprised most scientists, recent research has left them flabbergasted. Humans, it turns out, have mirror neurons that are far smarter.
He continued, "Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others, not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not by thinking."
Everyday experiences are also being viewed in a new light. Mirror neurons reveal how children learn, why people respond to certain types of sports, dance, music and art, and why watching media violence may be harmful.
Mirror neurons are found in several areas of the brain - including the pre-motor cortex, the posterior parietal lobe, the superior temporal sulcus and the insula − and they fire in response to chains of actions linked to intentions.
Researchers at UCLA found that cells in the human anterior cingulate, which normally fire when you poke the patient with a needle ("pain neurons"), will also fire when the patient watches another patient being poked.
"I call them empathy neurons," leading neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is quoted as saying. "Intriguingly, in 2000, Eric Altschuller, Jamie Pineda and I were able to show (using EEG recordings) that autistic children lack the mirror neuron system. And we pointed out that this deficit may help explain the very symptoms that are unique to autism: lack of empathy, theory of other minds, language skills, and imitation." Although initially contested, several groups - including UCLA, spearheaded in part by Lindsey Oberman in Ramachandran's lab - have now confirmed this discovery of the neural basis of autism.
Mirror neurons also deal a deathblow to the "nature vs. nurture" debate, for it shows how human nature depends crucially on learnability that is partly facilitated by these very circuits.
Ramachandran's pronouncement that "mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology," is a prophesy which is already starting to come true. In fact, he notes, "When I saw Rizzollati at a meeting recently he complained, jokingly, that my off-the-wall remark is now quoted more often than all his original papers!"
So I guess we can only pray that our Mirror Neurons will gain their "learnability" from the Yetzer HaTov (positive inclinations). And may we be worthy of the trust of the Almighty.
For Further Reading:
Iacoboni M, Molnar-Szakacs I, Gallese V, Buccino G, Mazziotta JC, et al. (2005) Grasping the Intentions of Others with One's Own Mirror Neuron System. PLoS Biol 3(3): e79.
Ramachandran, V.S., "Mirror Neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind 'the great leap forward' in human evolution," Edge, no. 69, May 29, 2000.
Originally published in the Jewish Press on April 2, 2007.
