All such cognitive tasks depend critically on the prefrontal lobes of the cerebral cortex. This brain region is essential to any mental process that requires holding the traces of alternative associations and behavioral options in mind to be compared, so that one can act with respect to likely consequences and not merely with respect to their general reinforcement value or their stimulus salience. Reduction of such stimulus drives allows the most effective sampling of options. It is suggested that the prefrontal lobes are disproportionately enlarged in human brains as an evolutionary adaptation to the demands imposed by symbol learning and use. The indirectness of symbolic reference demands a shift of attention away from immediately associated features and to the relational logic behind the symbols, which binds them into a system. So this neuro-anatomical divergence from the ancestral condition likely contributes to the capacity and perhaps even a predisposition to generate the “simulations” required for the representation of others’ experiences.
From J. Wentzel Vrede van Huyssteen, Encyclopedia Of Science And Religion
But it is the referential displacement provided by symbols themselves that is probably critical to reducing the differential in salience of competing emotional state representations to make this mental comparison possible. Studies with primates and children have shown, for example, that failures to make optimal choices when highly arousing stimuli (e.g., candy) are presented can be overcome by substituting representations for the actual thing. By a somewhat ironic logic, then, it may be the capacity to use representations to reduce the emotional salience of particular experiences that has enabled the development of intersubjective empathic abilities.
