ミラーニューロンと解離 39

 手直しが続くが、もうそろそろネイティブチェックに回す時期か。きっと真っ赤になって返ってくるだろう。

Dissociation and the mirror neuron system

 If we could hypothesize, as we did above, that each personality has its own dynamic core as its neurological correlate, it is still unknown how and in what situation these multiple dynamic cores are formed. It is our clinical observation that many personalities appear rather suddenly in a critical and traumatic situation where an individual is under an extreme stress. When an extreme emotion is experienced and dissociated, they become a part of “some personality” who came for rescue (McDougall, 1926, P543, van der Hart et al., 2006, p29) and this is how a personality is considered to be formed. But how can it happen?
　There have been theories regarding the process of “identification” as a crucial mechanism for the formation of personalities in DID (Putnam, 1989, Howell, 2014), especially aggressive ones when abusive situation occurs. Although the original notion such as “the identification with aggressor” (Ferenczi, 1933/1949) has a psychodynamic basis and not a biological one, some type of identification process on a neurological level might occur, giving rise to a new formation of DC. Theoretically this process should involve practical “copying” the aggressor’s various characteristics. But do we really have this miraculous copying capacity?  Fortunately in this era, we are aware of a specific neural mechanism enabling us to miraculously “copy” others; so-called “mirror neuron” system.
　 There has been an explosion of the studies related to mirror neuron for the past decades. Mirror neuron was discovered in 1996 by Italian neurophysiologists in the University of Parma, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Fogassi, and Vittorio Gallese (Rizzolatti, Craighero, 2004, Rizzolatti, Fabbri-Destro,2010). They found that some neurons in the ventral premotor cortex of macaque monkeys responded when the monkeys observed a person picking up food, the same neurons that are activated when monkeys do the same behaviors. By definition, A mirror neuron is a neuron that gets activated both when an animal acts and observes the same action by another, thus "mirroring" the other’s behaviors of the other, as though the observer him/herself is acting vicariously (Rizzolatti, Craighero, 2004,). Reportedly, mirror neurons have been found in human, primate species, and birds.