Brain scientists at the University of Parma in the late 1980′s made an amazing discovery.  They were using new, non-invasive technologies that enable scientists to detect the activity (‘firing’) of single neurons in the brains of, in this case, monkeys, and disovered a set of motor neurons that fire not only when the monkey performs a certain action but when s/he watches that action being performed by another animal.  By now ‘mirror neurons have been well documented in humans as well, leading one researcher, Dr. Marco Iacoboni of UCLA, to proclaim that we are “wired for empathy” since our central nervous system is fine-tuned to mirror the intentions of others.  The significance for nonviolence should not be underestimated: “when in the live confrontation of an oppressor’s wrong with forgiving love [but firm nonviolent resistance] the oppressor can be momentarily awakened and quickened in justice,”  in other words in a nonviolent moment, we now know that the opponent does not need to think about what s/he is witnessing: the nonviolent actor is actually creating a response in the former’s central nervous system.  If, as Gandhi insisted, nonviolence is a science, we have now opened a window onto its physiology — into our evolutionary inheritance of compassion.

Cf. Mirroring People, by Marco Iacoboni.