Dear Reader,
A few days ago, I brushed first past a person, only to then hit my shoulder on a door frame while everyone who heard the loud thudlaughed it off. How did I not see that? I was looking straight ahead, maybe thinking about something for only a moment, and then - what exactly happened? Prone to pondering, I developed a question that I went about exploring - how does the mind see? Prompted by his own personal experience, Michael Graziano - the author of The Spaces Between Us, spent more than 20 years studying a similar question: How does the brain's mechanism of physical self-protection work?
Second Skin and Neurons
Like Graziano, my bruised shoulder made me wonder how our body backs away and flinches to protect us. Doesn't our everyday social interaction involve these flinches all the time? Someone just walking around, perhaps standing and asking about our day, smoothly invades our personal space at a moment's notice (Yeah, I know, this happens despite a global contagion tossing around).
The invisible “second skin” was initially studied in animals in the 1950s. Commonly referred to as “flight zones”, to protect them from falling prey to predators. For humans, Michael found that we have a built-in DNA mechanism (second skin) for this purpose. And the response of this second skin to the invasion of personal space can influence our behaviour in a significant way. The psychology of “peripersonal space”also confirms this.
The Neuroscience of Space Perception
Some of the key discoveries in neuroscience about personal space have come from the study of a single neuron of a monkey and a ping pong ball. Graziano explained, “When an object moved near the monkey's face, the neuron fired at a high rate, telling the monkey, “There's something there.” Then we would turn the lights out—it was completely dark—but the neuron still fired, shouting to the monkey, “That object's still there! You can't see it but it's still there!” Interestingly, this mechanism drew several conclusions, one of them was – “Neurons for Lovers”. (I know, right? It is so fascinating how the neurons in our brain make everything look so effortless and flawless!).
Our magical brain computes a flexible buffer zone around our bodies based on our social interactions. This buffer zone is exceptionally significant in how we feel and react to each other. Invasion of this buffer zone impacts us hugely. Our subtle defensive system is always at work, adjusting our behaviour and keeping our bodies safe from the violation of these buffer zones.
In the 1960s, American anthropologist Edward Hall tackled the question of personal space. He described how President Kennedy, mostly being flooded with people, always maintained a bubble around him. This distance, Hall categorised as proxemics (- personal space) in a series of spheres called 'rings of personal space'.
The Cognition and Culture of Personal Space
It takes social and emotional intelligence to discern what works for different people. Many years ago, a little kid was failing to sense the space around him. He was bumping into things, squeezing between people. The child was expelled from his school for what was deemed 'inappropriate' behaviour. The skills associated with personal space have been so undervalued that we only notice it when something goes haywire. This is how the science of peripersonal space became so pertinent to a researcher that he spent years studying it. The kid who was unable to build a spatial foundation around him (suffering from dyspraxia), was Professor Graziano's own son. Graziano thus mused through his deliberation “..personal space is a real thing that impacts real lives culturally, socially and emotionally..”.
The cognition of space is highly cultural as well with this idea of personal space being perceived differently in different parts of the world. Something acceptable in India, for example, may not be in Australia, Japan or Sweden. The ability to sense, identify and navigate personal space for individuals, the groups that we interact within and the world at large is fast becoming an ability without which it is difficult to establish easy interactions.
Violation of our own Volition?
Professor Graziano showed how the defensive system in our brain makes us do the simplest things without harming ourselves. While walking, we don't even have to think about it. Our system monitors everything in the background and adjusts our movements according to it. And this is precisely how we maintain a safeguard between ourselves and other people. You'll know this also if you have ever driven a car - how this indistinct sense of space prevents the corners of our car from hitting others. Michael emphasises that “if we were to examine any aspect of our lives, we might be able to see how the requirements of personal space shape it”.
Sometimes we unknowingly impinge on someone's idea of personal space. Sometimes we may do it knowingly, in an act of affection or aggression. This margin of safety is so commonly violated of our own volition. Can you imagine what would society look like if we lose this sense, this ability, our second skin? Michael discovered how devastating this could be for himself, his child and his family. From the science of personal space - if we wish to make sure that we don't threaten anyone by crossing their boundaries, one potential solution would be to find goldilocks zones (metaphorically, of course) for our day-to-day social dance.
This entire exercise may be considered futile at the moment given the way that the pandemic has shaped our daily reality. But we still see an extreme in the way that people behave. From complete isolation and quarantine to huge public gatherings for religious, social and political reasons, our sense of personal space may currently be considered to be a little warped. There was already some work to do in terms of helping people navigate this delicate invisible space, and now it seems like there might be more interesting work in store.
Contribution by Fazli & Everyone @TBR
