"Hers. I'd taken them with me. I stood there, tears streaming down my cheeks. But I had no death in the family. No breakup. No terminal diagnosis. And I didn't even know her or why she cried. But the emotional pain, her pain, now my pain, was as real as day."

I am sure it was! But enough feeling already. Why didn't you sit next to her, ask her if you could help, ask her if she needed help. And had you acted you might have been able to tell us the "why." This sounds like another episode of "watching from the window and doing nothing."

New York City has lost most vestiges of real altruism. It seems to apply altruism by proxy if at all. At the moment I write this millions of people are experiencing the pains of war, imprisonment, and torture to say nothing of the smaller sufferings of human life. There is far too often "nobody home" when real help is needed.

Nowhere does the article imply that scientists are trying to explain the WHY of altruism and empathy. At least not on a "meaning of life" scale. Just the how. If we can map and better understand the biology behind how we've evolved to utilize our neurons, why does that have to "split the lark" and remove the beauty and awe of consciousness? Life will still be beautiful and full of mysteries for the duration of our time in this world. Even with many times the knowledge we currently possess about the brain.

People who suffer from autism are less empathic, worse at reading the emotional states of others, and less emotionally connected to those around them. Functional MRIs show they also appear to have significantly less mirror neuron activity, says Iacoboni. Strengthening mirror activity in autistic kids, through imitation and other simple exercise, seems to help them, says Iacoboni.

I have noticed that people who do academic science often are less empathic, worse at reading the emotional states of others, and less emotionally connected to those around them.

Maybe a lack of mirror neurons helps one become the kind of socially detached workaholic one needs to become in order to be competitive in science?

If we stimulate the mirror neurons of young nerds, will they stop being nerds and lose their ability to focus so intensely on weird things?

We need nerds. Nerds do good things, like science and math for example.

What if we try to fix them and end up breaking them instead?

Well it is pretty conceptual, that we can actually feel as well as be witness to others emotions. That would not be totally surprising, as humans we have a wide range of feelings and emotions. I think the first feelings that we learn early in life, would be happiness, sadness, pleasant things, as well as unpleasant things. The hard wiring process I would have to concieve in my mind, is poised to the people in our world as children, that have reacted a certain way to surprise, a mishap, something bad happening, and then having it retraced through our own scope of understanding. Is the brain able to make all of the class distinctions? At times, I would think as young people, we are still not focused on many of our own feelings, so it is still a stretch to analyze how we choose to see something, with out the taint of someone elses attitude or opinion.

What makes angry, what makes us surprised, is as evolutionary as a kaliscope of being consciously aware of the remarkable pattern inside the nueron of how the thought is being processed. If indeed neurons, are like tiny mirrors, and those tiny mirrors are processing feelings, then it would easily be surmountable that as being human and with functioning brains that are whole, and have not suffered trauma or brain damage, we certainly are subject to a wide array of feelings, odd expericnces, and feelings that go beyond mere exception.

Think of intense joys, intense sorrow, intense surprise, then the interpretation, to the conscious self, and to the perception back again to the brain, of how things are processed in the first place. It is a stretch, but if mirrors are a real part of our critical thinking, then it would make perfect sense for our thinking and feeling selves. Now for other more contradictory patterns in thinking, if it were true, that we were mere thinking and feeling beings, wouldn't that mean, more people would come to our rescue? Rather than the other set of people that are geared by rules, time, actual production, versus help thy brother, mopey drama situations, messy break-ups, where those that applay principle and purpose, rather than hope, despair, tradgedy, and drama into their idea of self perpetualization of expression, while the others are unable to even manage to understand any sort of mirror principle what so ever.

So in theory, all that mirrorism, like big guru book "The Secret" has it's scant beliefs that some how there are magic molecules at work, that we shine off, as we commit to our inner projects, and continue to battle our demons, which would only make sense. The more we challenge our misconceptions about what it is, that we actualize, of course the results are going to be, that we are winning the war and challenge of struggle.

But, it still does not discredit, that hard work, and correct placement of time, effort and energy woudn't have the same effect. So the theroy of "The Secret" magnified again,"The Will" if you may, and what that emballizes is exactly what it suggests, that is in current belief the strength of G-d, it states quickly that very little will interupt what is necessary by the divinity and will of G-d as well. There are counter mysticial concepts, witch-craft, is a belief that by using certain herbs, that are considered ancient, and by using principles such as candle light, which represents the will, and drawing circles, life is represented as a non-ending line. But, in the instance of utilizing exterior force to contrieve the purpose defeats the purpose in the first place, of being able to maginfy ones scope of feelings, and have actual conscious feeling, of what another person is experiencing.

Those experiences usually only happen under heightend senses of emotion, sitting at a persons bedside who is ill, a first engagement, a first blush of love, has magical effects, where do you think all the drama comes in, and the continous effort to keep the vision alive. Novelst have been writing about these instances forver. I hope the vision of these mirror neurons is a proven and true identification, and that those that insist feelings/smellings, types manage to rectify and understand, they are greatly at disadvantage, even though principle and rule are by far effective, a world with out feelings would be a rather dull, unforeseeable, and cold place.