All about Empathy: Empathy Expert Big Page: Christian Keysers

'I'm French and German, born in Belgium. I studied Psychology and Biology in Konstanz, Bochum (Germany) and Boston (USA). I completed my PhD work in 2000 with David Perrett on the relationship between single neuron activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) of macaques and the perception of visual stimuli. Thereafter, in Parma (Italy), I examined the role of mirror neurons in understanding the actions of others. Later, I extended the idea of mirror neurons to sensations and emotions. '

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience: Empathy - shared circuits and their dysfunctions.

Observing another individual acting upon an object triggers cerebral activity well beyond the visual cortex of the observer in areas directly involved in planning and executing actions. This we will call action simulation. Importantly, the brain does not solely simulate the actions of others but also the sensations they feel, and their emotional responses.

These simulation mechanisms are most active in individuals who report being very empathic. Simulation may indeed be instrumental for our understanding of the emotional and mental state of people in our sight, and may contribute heavily to the social interactions with our peers by providing a first-person perspective on their inner feelings.

The Empathic Brain

While we watch a movie, we share the experiences of the actors we observe: our heart for instance starts beating faster while we see an actor slip from the roof of a tall building. Why? Specific brain areas are involved when we perform certain actions or have certain emotions or sensations. Interestingly, some of these areas are also recruited when we simply observe someone else performing similar actions, having similar sensations or having similar emotions.

These areas called 'shared circuits' transform what we see into what we would have done or felt in the same situation. With such brain areas, understanding other people is not an effort of explicit thought but becomes an intuitive sharing of their emotions, sensations and actions. Through the investigation of shared circuits, our lab attempts to understand the neural basis of empathy and its dysfunctions.

Abnormal neuroscience: Scanning psychopaths
Christian Keysers (right) and Harma Meffert want to dissect empathy by scanning psychopaths.

To investigate this trait, Keysers is comparing 'normally' empathic people with those who lack empathy, such as people with autism, and psychopaths. He suspects that psychopaths may be able to recognize emotions in others but that they are also able to disconnect that recognition from their own emotions. “Our question is: do they do terrible things to other people because, unlike most of us, they do not share the pain they inflict?” says Keysers. His sophisticated trial design is intended to test whether this is the case (

Kinesthetic Empathy 2010: This multidisciplinary conference looked at the relationship between the arts (dance in particular) and neuroscience. In his lecture Christian explores how mirroring in the brain helps us understand why we relate so strongly to movies and dance performances.

PART 1 - From Mirror Neurons to Kinesthetic Empathy: Keynote Address from Christian Keysers from The Watching Dance Project on Vimeo.

PART 2: From Mirror Neurons to Kinesthetic Empathy from The Watching Dance Project on Vimeo.

Understanding Virtue 2011: At this Caltech conference, researchers from various fields came together to explore what makes humans virtuous. Christian explained how the discovery of mirror neurons sheds light onto our morality:

The Vicarious Brain: The Neural Basis of Empathy, Learning by Observation, and Sociopathy from Fuller Seminary on Vimeo (If you want to skip the introductions go to 11:00).