Attempted Robbery and Mirror Neurons

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Here is an interesting video recorded by a Go Pro camera that documents an attempted robbery of a guy riding his bicycle in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Go ahead and watch it if you haven’t.

Chances are your mirror neurons (cells in your brain) will light up as this guy experiences fear and hence so will you! Mirror neurons make us feel what others are feeling when we see them go through an experience. You know when you see a friend cut their finger with a sharp object and you wince?  That’s your mirror neurons!

I find mirror neurons fascinating.

When I teach my class to students, I frequently feel the power of mirror neurons in a really strange way.

I play a lot of emotional videos in my training class and my students mirror neurons work very well. They always mirror the emotions of the victims or suspects in the video beautifully. But I wasn’t prepared for how it would bounce and further affect me.

As the instructor, I have seen these videos hundreds of times so I don’t typically watch them. I am usually not listening to the content of the video or thinking about it either. I am often thinking about other things that I need to do and inevitably, through natural pauses in thinking and looking up at my students, I find my face starting to react to my students’ emotions.

I will start to feel a flush of an emotion overcome me.  It’s surreal because I might be thinking I need to check-in for my flight tomorrow when I start feeling this rush of sadness.  And I will catch the feelings of sadness and be perplexed. Why do I suddenly feel sad?  And then I have to re-orient myself and ask what video are we playing right now?  And 100% of the time the  emotions I am starting to feel correlate to the video playing, but  I am not watching it or listening to it.  But I am glancing at my students and obviously my mirror neurons are firing from seeing them!

It’s the strangest thing.

It’s what I would call a mirror neuron bounce effect. A person in the video feels an emotion. They express it. My students watch it, and they feel what the person in the video feels. Then I see the faces of people watching the video, and I, too, react to them watching the video. It all happens involuntarily, too.

I never expected that mirror neurons would bounce like that, but I have experienced it enough to know they do, and when I see a really intense emotion expressed on a face, I will start to experience the strong flood of emotion myself regardless of the source!

So I wonder, does the movement of the facial muscles activate the mirror neurons?  Or do the mirror neurons activate the facial muscles?

Are you a good liar?

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I found the above video interesting.  It’s Richard Wiseman, a professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire (UK).  You can read more about him here.

“Some people will just see [my work] as fun and say, that’s interesting. I would hope a few people then go slightly beyond that and look at the implications. I want people to find that for themselves.”
—Richard Wiseman

So do you draw a Q for you to see or others?

Do you believe it equates with you being a good liar or not?

Thanks to Brent for sharing this!

Expression of the Day

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Reading the news this morning, I came across the story of  little Etan Kalil Patz who disappeared from lower Manhattan in 1979.

Apparently this man, Pedro Hernandez, was interviewed by police in 2012 and confessed to killing Etan.

The courts will determine this week  if Pedro Hernandez‘s statements are admissible in this case.

Statistically speaking, 25% of confessions made by people are false, so just because someone confesses, it does not  automatically mean they are one responsible for committing the crime.

When I saw this news story and I looked at this suspect shown in the article, his facial expression stopped me dead in my tracks.  Hernandez’s expression here is extremely threatening. If I saw him on the street, I would immediately look away and take actions to get as far away from him as I could. I would try to become invisible in the shortest amount of time.

What expression is Hernandez making here?  I will share my answer in my comments below (on the blog for those of you reading this elsewhere).

Oscar Pistorius Trial: Not Premeditated?

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The judge’s opinion in this case is somewhat straddling two worlds if you ask me. Matt Gutman says the judge doesn’t believe that Oscar was trying to defend himself and Reeva, but that the prosecution’s claim that he intended to shoot her behind the bathroom door also don’t hold water.

What does she believe? I’m curious to hear!

Is she looking to set him free? I’m nervous.

I believe Oscar Pistorius by his own words and the evidence known got into an argument that night with Reeva, and he had a violent temper outburst and killed her in a heat of rage. Did he premeditate the killing as in plan it ahead? No. I don’t believe so.

I believe Oscar Pistorius snapped.

He also didn’t have immediate regrets either as he clearly had no urgency to get her to a hospital quickly. He doesn’t call the ambulance first. No, he calls his friend wasting precious time. That says everything. Did he even try CPR?

I believe Oscar willingly and knowingly murdered Reeva in a fit of rage, and I am very saddened that he will not be convicted of such.

To read more of my analysis of Oscar, click on the tags below.

* This video is programmed by ESPN to auto play on load. I am unable to turn this off. If anyone knows how, please inform me. Thanks!

Do I believe NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell?

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The answer is no. I do not.

I see many hot spots in his speech.

Goodell says, “I don’t know how TMZ or any other website gets their information. We are particularly reliant on law enforcement. That’s the most reliable. It’s the most credible. And we don’t seek to get that information from sources that are not credible.”

I think the words “don’t seek” are so key here.  It says it all.

It’s absurd they would say they don’t know where TMZ gets their information. If they did an ounce of investigation for themselves, they would have immediately gone to the casino — the most direct and credible source of information possible.  They didn’t even have to wait for any investigation.

Video surveillance doesn’t lie.  Ever.

Especially when you see a woman being knocked out cold!

A minute or two later, Goodell says, “That’s why we asked for it on several occasions. Because when we make a decision we want to have all the information that’s available. And obviously that was…when we met with… Ray Rice and his representatives, ah… it was ambiguous about what actually happened.”

It was ambiguous?  It’s nonsense.

Goodell and the NFL could get the public records own their own without relying on the police to do an investigation. These records would have delineated Rice’s arrest, and they could see he was charged with aggravated assault, which is a felony.  They could also see where it happened.   If they had any doubt, the NFL could have easily asked for a copy of the video from the casino where this happened to find out the truth, but according to TMZ they never asked the casino for a copy of the video because I suspect they wanted it to “go away”.