Brain solutions for hearing problems during the COVID-19 pandemic and the misery of wearing a mask

In COVID-19 pandemics days, wearing facial mask in public places has become obligatory to prevent the virus spread. In addition to its valuable protection, wearing facial mask can affect verbal communication in an adverse fashion and makes mutual understanding difficult. This happens because the mask eliminates the positive effect of the lip-reading phenomenon in direct communications. The mirror neuron system is responsible for automatic imitation, associative sequence learning, and motor mimicry. This system is a strong candidate justifying an unexpected action described in this article.

Taking the facial mask off, to help the listener understanding better is a normal reaction. However, unexpectedly, one does the same as the listener when he/she is unable to comprehend the speaker. Herein, we suggest a hypothesis proposing the basic role of Mirror neuron system in this action. Most of the research on these cells have been conducted on monkeys, where the researchers observed that, these neuron discharge pulses both when a monkey performs an action and when it observes another monkey or a person committing the similar action.

The driving mechanism of an unanticipated action of taking off mask while listening to a speaker is emphasized in this paper. Herein, we try to clarify how we came up with the idea that mirror neuron system drives a surprising action observed in COVID-19 pandemics days. As a result, we suggest possible clinical studies to verify our hypothesis.