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Culture of Empathy Builder:   Christian Keysers
http://j.mp/1sr8HnM

 
 

Christian Keysers and Edwin Rutsch: The Empathic Brain - Chapter by Chapter Book Review

Christian Keysers is professor and group leader of the Social Brain Lab at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. The lab explores the biological nature and neuroscience of empathy.

Christian is author of 'The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes our Understanding of Human Nature'.

In this interview, Christian gives a chapter by chapter narration of the book, which explores the nut's and bolts neuroscience of empathy. In the book, he illustrates the science with his own experiences and with stories. The journey starts at the lab in Parma, Italy where mirror neurons were first discovered and where he also worked.  Sub Conference: Science

   

Links

 

 
Study: Brain research shows psychopathic criminals do not lack empathy, but fail to use it automatically
Christian Keysers & Edwin Rutsch

 

Christian Keysers is professor and group leader of the Social Brain Lab at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. The lab explores the biological nature and neuroscience of empathy. Christian is author of 'The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes our Understanding of Human Nature'.

Christian discusses his teams new findings. "A brain imaging study in the Netherlands shows individuals with psychopathy have reduced empathy while witnessing the pains of others. When asked to empathize, however, they can activate their empathy." ScienceDaily 
 Sub Conferences: Science and
Pathologies

 

 

 

Dr. Christian Keysers - The Empathic Brain
Nov 9, 2018
At our 2018 Research Symposium, Dr. Christian Keysers spoke about the science behind empathy and what makes us social as humans. Dr. Keysers is the Co-Founder & Co-Director of the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and is a Professor of Social Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam.
 

 

 

 

 

 

How does empathy work? | Neuroscientist prof. Christian Keysers: "We can choose to train empathy"

 

Empathy Defininition

https://youtu.be/hwBYb7XDiIs?t=20m15s

  • emotional contagion

  • mimicry

  • empathy - self other distinction

  • sympathy

  • prosocial behaviour

 

 

 

KEYSERS GROUP
We try to decipher the brain circuitry that makes us empathic.
Or what Christian Keysers present the lab at the Marie Curie Action’s 20th Anniversary in Brussels

Video Player
 
01:44
11:25
 

 

 

 

The Vicarious Brain: The Neural Basis of Empathy, Learning by Observation, and Sociopathy

  
 

EASP 2011 Pre-Conference Symposium -
Roundtable Discussion - Neuroscience and Social Psychology: Challenges and Opportunities

 

 


Brain research shows psychopathic criminals do not lack empathy, but fail to use it automatically
Christian Keysers & Edwin Rutsch

 

 

 

 

Empathy - the monkey and the peanut - HD
 

 

 

 

 

PART 1 - From Mirror Neurons to Kinesthetic Empathy: Keynote Address from Christian Keysers


 

 

 
Why is it that we can get sad, when we see someone else crying? Why is it that we wince, when a friend cuts his finger? Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have found that the rat brain activates the same cells when they observe the pain of others as when they experience pain themselves. In addition, without activity of these “mirror neurons”, the animals no longer share the pain of others. As many psychiatric disorders are characterized by a lack of empathy, finding the neural basis for sharing the emotions of others, and being able to modify how much an animal shares the emotions of others, is an exciting step towards understanding empathy and these disorders. The findings are published in the leading journal Current Biology.

 

Empathy - the monkey and the peanut - HD from People United on Vimeo.

In our first Living Room, Empathy: the monkey and the peanut playwright and campaigner, Sarah Woods, and neuroscientist, Professor Christian Keysers, explored the science behind empathy, and the part that mirror neurons in particular play in activating an empathic response in us.
In this short film Sarah and Christian speak about how their curiosity about empathy first arose, the journey their explorations have taken them on, and what they have learnt about empathy through art and science
 

 

 

2015-01-16 - The straw man in the brain
Pop culture claims about the brain make for easy targets, finds Christian Keysers

"Unfortunately, these examples are not exceptions but are reflective of Hickok’s methods throughout the book: He presents and then deconstructs dramatically oversimplified claims about mirror neurons, implying that these reflect the proposals of the scientists working in this field. His refutations of these claims are passionate and compelling but, ironically, lead down the very path of mystification he tries to denounce. "

 

 
The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes our Understanding of Human Nature,
The Empathic Brain | Empathy and Compassion | Scoop.it

"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. "

(book is available for a $2.99 download)

 
Study: Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy

 

"Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with a profound lack of empathy. Neuroscientists have associated empathy and its interindividual variation with how strongly participants activate brain regions involved in their own actions, emotions and sensations while viewing those of others. Here we compared brain activity of 18 psychopathic offenders with 26 control subjects while viewing video clips of emotional hand interactions and while experiencing similar interactions."
 
2013-07-24 - Brain research shows psychopathic criminals do not lack empathy, but fail to use it automatically
 

 

 A brain imaging study in the Netherlands shows individuals with psychopathy have reduced empathy while witnessing the pains of others. When asked to empathize, however, they can activate their empathy.

 

Criminal psychopathy can be" both repulsive and fascinating, as illustrated by the vast number of books and movies inspired by this topic. Offenders diagnosed with psychopathy pose a significant threat to society, because they are more likely to harm other individuals and to do so again after being released. A brain imaging study in the Netherlands shows individuals with psychopathy have reduced empathy while witnessing the pains of others. When asked to empathize, however, they can activate their empathy. This could explain why psychopathic individuals can be callous and socially cunning at the same time.

Why are psychopathic individuals more likely to hurt others.

 
July 24, 2013 - Brain research shows psychopathic criminals do not lack empathy, but fail to use it automatically
 

 

"A brain imaging study in the Netherlands shows individuals with psychopathy have reduced empathy while witnessing the pains of others. When asked to empathize, however, they can activate their empathy.

Criminal psychopathy can be both repulsive and fascinating, as illustrated by the vast number of books and movies inspired by this topic. Offenders diagnosed with psychopathy pose a significant threat to society, because they are more likely to harm other individuals and to do so again after being released. A brain imaging study in the Netherlands shows individuals with psychopathy have reduced empathy while witnessing the pains of others. When asked to empathize, however, they can activate their empathy. This could explain why psychopathic individuals can be callous and socially cunning at the same time. Why are psychopathic individuals more likely to hurt others? "
 
A love story about the power of mirror neurons.  bbc.co.uk

"Anja and Rhys's love story is told from a neurological perspective, by neuroscientist Christian Keysers. It's the story of two individuals whose brains begin to 'mirror' each other as they gradually fall in love. As Christian says it's "...not so much an exchange of information as two brains becoming one."

Author of 'The Empathic Brain', Christian is Head of the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences. He seeks to understand how, as social animals, our brains mirror those of other people, so that understanding others is not an effort of explicit thought but an intuitive sharing of emotions, sensations and actions."

 

An 'empathy switch' allows psychopaths to feel at will by James Vincent

New study tested psychopathic prisoners by asking them watch video clips showing pain

"It was previously thought that psychopaths lacked the capacity for empathy but new research shows they are able to switch it on and off 'at will'. The study took eighteen psychopathic prisoners and showed them a variety of video clips of people hurting each other or displaying affection. Brain activity in the regions involved with empathy were then monitored as the subjects watched the videos."

 


Christian Keysers: The Empathic Brain - Chapter by Chapter Book Review (all Chapters 1 hour)

 

 

Introduction: Connecting People

Wedding experience

James Bond and Spider

1.  The Discovery of Mirror Neurons
"Mirror neurons “mirror” the behavior and emotions of the people surrounding us in such a way that the others become part of us. Knowing that such cells exist can explain many of the mysteries of human behavior. For instance, why it’s so hard to stick to a diet if you see people around you that eat the very thing you should not. Mirror neurons provide an answer"

  • Is perception like a sandwich?

  • From seeing to doing

  • Brain function based on connections between neurons

  • The brain vocabulary of action

  • Bringing visions into the world of movement

  • How the brain encodes goals

  • What happens when we hear an action?

Empathic Brain: Chapter 1: The Discovery of Mirror Neurons by Christian Keysers  (12 min)

 
 

 

2.  The Power of Intuition

Paradoxically, the major hurdle to understanding the human mind is the obsession for rationality of the minds of the scientists that study it. The second hurdle is computers. Together, they have created the vision of a brain that processes all information in a conscious, logical and abstract way–much as ordinary computers do. The discovery of mirror neurons changed this vision.

  • We predict the actions of others based on what we would do

  • Understanding others: What it would feel like to do the same

  • How mirror neurons facilitate imitation


Empathic Brain: Chapter 2: The Power of Intuition
(3:22 min)


 

 

 

3.  Human Mirroring

"Shortly after the team in Parma first discovered mirror neurons in monkeys, neuroscientists interested in the social mind everywhere in the world began to debate whether a similar system exists in humans."

  • Seeing an action activates our body

  • Magnetizing the mirror system

  • From Parma to Holland: A day in the new lab

  • We understand action sounds through our own actions

  • The mirror system includes several brain regions

  • Empathic individuals mirror more
     

Empathic Brain: Chapter 3: Human Mirroring (3 min)

 

 

 

 

4.  Born to Socialize

"In a classical view of the brain, the process of understanding other individuals relies on specialized systems in the brain that are separate from those responsible for our own actions. This suggests that your own motor skills should have limited and indirect influences on your perception of other people’s behavior. In the light of mirror neurons, the situation is quite different."

  • Learning how to perform an action changes our perception

  • The mirror in our brain even responds to robots

  • How people born without hands mirror hand movements

  • Mirror system facilitates understanding of goals

  • Learning by observation

  • A neural basis for intuitions

  • Implications for teaching: an action is worth a thousand words

  • Simulation is a fundamental principle of brain function

 

Empathic Brain: Chapter 4: Born to Socialize  (5 min)

 

 

 

5.  Language
"From an evolutionary perspective, human language seems to come out of nowhere. With the discovery of mirror neurons, this has changed. Apes may not spontaneously use language, nor can they learn grammar even in contact with humans—but they have much of what it takes to do so. Mirror neurons prepare apes to realize that they can communicate and share skills with others"

  • The blue banana with a hundred legs

  • Searching for language’s missing link

  • A scenario for the evolution of language

  • Linking the motor system with language

  • Bridging the inexplicable gap to language

  • Foundation #1: Realizing that a message came through

  • Foundation # 2: Hearing is doing

  • Foundation #3: Associating meaning and words

  • Foundation #4: The grammar of actions

  • Conclusion
     

Empathic Brain: Chapter 5: Language (15 min)

 

 

 

6.  Sharing Emotions
"
Our feeling goes further than our personal experience and observation, though. While we watch James Bond being wakened by the tarantula, our understanding is not limited to his bodily actions—we also share his feelings. We sweat with his fear and rejoice with his victory. The feelings of the people that surround us are contagious."

  • Models of emotional communications

  • Emotional contagion and facial mimicry

  • Sharing the feeling of disgust

  • From mirror neurons to shared circuits

  • Recognizing emotion in others

  • Recognizing emotional sounds

  • You need to feel emotions to empathize with others

  • Connecting what you see with what you feel

  • The body is part and parcel of the mind

  • More empathic people activate the insula more strongly

  • Delight is also shared in the insula

  • The power of words

  • It takes one to know one

  • The difference between a fake and a real smile

  • Sharing facial expressions is essential for understanding others’ emotions

  • Facial mimicry triggers emotional contagion

  • Sharing emotions with a poker-face

  • Blurring the border between individuals

    Empathic Brain: Chapter 6: Sharing Emotions (15 min)

 

 

 

7.  Sensations
"
Over the years, evidence of a mirror system for action has accumulated and our vision of the brain has changed accordingly into one of a more integrated system that processes the actions of other people using the same areas that are activated while programming our own actions."

  • Seeing touch is literally touching

  • Why it hurts to damage your car

  • How your pain becomes my pain

  • Is knowing as good as seeing?

  • Why being touched feels different from viewing touch

  • Men reserve their empathy for fair people, women don’t

  • Starting a war requires down-regulating empathy

  • The social brains of women and men may differ

  • I can feel you move

 

Empathic Brain: Chapter 7: Sensations  (8 min)

 

 

 

8.  Learning to Share
"
Shared circuits appear to be ubiquitous: we activate our own actions, sensations, and emotions while witnessing the actions, sensations, and emotions of others. This begs the simple and yet central question of how mirror neurons develop. In turn, we have to ask how a single neuron can ever respond to three things that physically have very little in common: the contractions of our muscles while we perform an action, the photons hitting our eyes while we see a similar action and the sound pressure waves while we hear this action."

  • Hebb: how the brain learns to associate

  • How associations in the brain create mirror neurons

  • Linking your own actions with those of others

  • Learning the difference between self and other

  • You can only mirror what you can do

  • To babble is to build a mirror system for language

  • Associating my sensations with yours

  • Why parents imitate the facial expressions of their baby

  • Associating somatosensory and motor mirroring

  • The mirror system changes throughout life

  • Why mirror neurons cannot be everywhere in the brain

  • Learning to predict

  • Learning to complement

  • Hebbian learning makes shared circuits surprisingly simple
     

Empathic Brain: Chapter 8-11: Learning to Share, Autism, Unifying Theory, Empathic Ethics (4 min)

 

 

 

9.  Autism and Misunderstandings
 

  • The Curious Incident–a literary introduction to autism

  • Autistic people have restricted interests

  • Autistic people neglect the social world

  • Are shared circuits impaired in autism?

  • Autistic people imitate less

  • Neuroimaging to quantify mirror system activity in autism

  • Autism is more complex than a broken mirror

  • Hebbian therapy could help in autism

  • Is a broken mirror a broken heart?

  • Birds of a feather flock together

  • The more you experienced the more you understand

  • The mirror system can lie: Implications for therapists

  • Look in your mirror and you will see a human

10.  Unifying Theory of Social Cognition

  • It takes both thinking and intuition to understand others

  • I learn what you learn

  • Implications for teaching: punishment and reward in public

11.  Empathic Ethics

  • Ethics has more to do with feelings than with thinking

  • Shared circuits are our moral voice

  • Animal Compassion

  • Moral Feelings and Learning

  • The evolutionary riddle: why do selfish genes care about others?

  • Psychopathy —the dark side of morality

  • A checklist to identify psychopaths

  • Psychopaths are glib and grandiose liars

  • Sociopaths have an impulsive and parasitic lifestyle

  • Psychopaths have a history of antisocial behavior

  • Don’t empathize: think!

  • Knowing no fear

  • The dark art of silencing empathizing

  • A day out for Patient 13

  • Moral Shields

  • I shall do to you what I wish would be done to me

  • Laws exist because of cheaters and psychopaths

 

Epilogue - Are Mirror Neurons Good or Bad

How much of us is purely private, then? How many of our bodily skills are ours? Shared circuits blur this question and distinction because the moment I see you do something, your actions become mine. The moment I see your pain, I share it. Are these actions and pain yours? Are they mine? The border between individuals is softened through the neural activity of these systems. A little bit of you becomes me, and a little bit of me becomes you.

=============================================================

 

 

October 05, 2012- A Career for Two, With Empathy
 Neuroscientists Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola have built their careers on an idea that most of us accept but that is hard to pin down scientifically: that subtle, often-unconscious cues and perceptions—intuitions—offer insight into another person's feelings and behavior. It's commonly called empathy

 

 

2011-08-13 - Live Chat with Christian Keysers, author: The Empathic Brain
We talk with Christian Keysers, author of The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes our Understanding of Human Nature.

 


16 July 2012 - Psychopaths can feel empathy on demand
Psychopaths do not lack empathy and can turn it on when they want to, according to new research that challenges the current understanding of the psychological disorder. Psychopaths involved in the study showed very little empathy for others, but this was reversed once they were told the experiment would measure their levels of empathy.

“It was one of the really exciting and surprising results,” said Christian Keysers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, who announced these results at the Euroscience Open Forum in Dublin, Ireland.


 

Pain Empathy | Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman
A scientist (Christian Keysers) creates hair-raising experimental short films
to find out how empathy works in the human brain.

 

Through the Wormhole S3E7 - Can We Eliminate Evil?   42 min.

 

 

02:30 The nature of evil and psychopaths.   In Amsterdam, Christian Keysers is studying empathy. Christian is looking for the source of human cruelty. To find out how empathy works in our brains,Christian makes short films of painful acts to screen for test subjects. He scans the brains of psychopaths. Psychopaths do have capacity for empathy, they just don't use it spontaneously.

 

 

 

(Through the wormhole: pain empathy )

 



From the TV series 'The Brain: A secret history'
Christian Keysers explains how empathy can be measured using fMRI.
There's  a segment with
Christian Keysers

 
 

 

 

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.
 

 

 

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)
.  

"Dr. Christian Keysers gives a lecture entitled, "The Vicarious Brain: The Neural Basis of Empathy, Learning by Observation, and Sociopathy." Dr. Keysers is Professor for the Social Brain at the University of Groningen.

This session is part of the conference, Understanding Virtue: New Directions Bridging Neuroscience and Philosophy, funded by a grant from the Science and Transcendence Advanced Research Series (STARS) of the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences. It was sponsored by the Travis Research Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary and the California Institute of Technology."
 

 

  • 11:00 Looking at Virture

    • evolution stories says- survival of the fittest and selfish gene

    • not how things are

      • taxes

      • soldiers

      • charity

    • there is kindness in the world

    • where does kindness and compassion come from

  • 14:00  outline

    • 1. Empathy and vicarious activations

      • actions

      • sensations

      • emotion

    • 2. Neuroscience of learning by observations

    • 3. A mind without compassion - psychopaths

  • 15:00 1. Empathy and vicarious activations

    • Actions

      • James Bond spider

        • perceive inner states

      • monkey studies

 

Response To "The Vicarious Brain: The Neural Basis of Empathy, Learning by Observation, and Sociopathy"

 
Dr. Nancey Murphy responds to Christian Keyser's lecture, "The Vicarious Brian: The Neural Basis of Empathy, Learning by Observation, and Sociopathy" followed by a Question and Answer session with both speakers. Dr. Murphy is Professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary.

 

 

Pains Study - Through the Wormhole

 

 

 

 

=======================================================================

Notes and further questions

 

The Empathic Brain - detailed notes
How the discovery of mirror neurons changes our understanding of human nature

(Worked at the lab where mirror neurons were discovered)

( Best way to build a culture of empathy? Marco Iacoboni said educated people about mirror neurons)

(teaching empathy should start with mirror neurons)

  • Introduction: Connecting People

    • Wedding experience

    • James Bond and Spider

    • Mirror neurons and seeing others eating chocolate

  • 1 The Discovery of Mirror Neurons

    • Is perception like a sandwich?

    • From seeing to doing

    • Brain function based on connections between neurons

    • The brain vocabulary of action

    • Bringing visions into the world of movement

    • How the brain encodes goals

    • What happens when we hear an action?

  • 2 The Power of Intuition

    • rational scientists create description of brain

    • mirror neurons,how us that abstract thinking is not the only process we use while observing the behavior of other organisms

    • We predict the actions of others based on what we would do

    • Understanding others: What it would feel like to do the same

      • reading intensions (motivations)

    • How mirror neurons facilitate imitation

  • 3 Human Mirroring

    • Seeing an action activates our body

    • Magnetizing the mirror system

    • From Parma to Holland: A day in the new lab

    • We understand action sounds through our own actions

    • The mirror system includes several brain regions

    • Empathic individuals mirror more

  • 4 Born to Socialize

    • Learning how to perform an action changes our perception

      • piano players study

      • study with Ballet dancers

      • fencing courses

      • If you truly want to understand particular actions of other individuals, don’t just study, but acquire their skills, and you will understand them much better. Referees in sports, musical critics, sports’ therapists, and many other professionals should all benefit from realizing that there is a tight causal relationship between their motor skills and their perception.

    • The mirror in our brain even responds to robots

    • How people born without hands mirror hand movements

    • Mirror system facilitates understanding of goals

    • Learning by observation

    • A neural basis for intuitions

    • Implications for teaching: an action is worth a thousand words

      • In our knowledge-based civilization, abstract knowledge is valued higher than any practical skill. Einstein, able to grasp the hidden laws of matter and the universe through a simple equation, E=mc2, represents the ultimate genius that most people would be proud to be. Intellectual, abstract, rational  thinking is often seen as the goal that schools should strive toward, with more practical and intuitive  skills seen as less worthwhile.

      • In terms of teaching, the mirror system suggests that abstract theory might  not always be the most effective way of teaching

    • Simulation is a fundamental principle of brain function

      • Another prominent example of simulation is imagination.

      • Imagining actions, viewing actions, and hearing the sound of actions can thus all be seen as examples of simulation.

      • so what is cognitive empathy???

  • 5 Language

    • The blue banana with a hundred legs

    • Searching for language’s missing link

    • A scenario for the evolution of language

    • Linking the motor system with language

    • Bridging the inexplicable gap to language

    • Foundation #1: Realizing that a message came through

      • Mirror neurons could play a particular role in establishing this sense of “getting a message through” even in our non-human ancestors.

    • Foundation # 2: Hearing is doing

    • Foundation #3: Associating meaning and words

      • Canonical neurons

    • Foundation #4: The grammar of actions

    • Conclusion

  • 6 Sharing Emotions

    • Models of emotional communications

    • Emotional contagion and facial mimicry

      • direct facial mimicry

      • direct emotional contagion

    • Sharing the feeling of disgust

    • From mirror neurons to shared circuits

    • Recognizing emotion in others

    • Recognizing emotional sounds

    • You need to feel emotions to empathize with others

    • Connecting what you see with what you feel

    • The body is part and parcel of the mind

    • More empathic people activate the insula more strongly

    • Delight is also shared in the insula

    • The power of words

    • It takes one to know one

    • The difference between a fake and a real smile

    • Sharing facial expressions is essential for understanding others’ emotions

    • Facial mimicry triggers emotional contagion

    • Sharing emotions with a poker-face

    • Blurring the border between individual

  • 7 Sensations

    • Seeing touch is literally touching

    • Why it hurts to damage your car

    • How your pain becomes my pain

    • Is knowing as good as seeing?

    • Why being touched feels different from viewing touch

    • Men reserve their empathy for fair people, women don’t

    • Starting a war requires down-regulating empathy

    • The social brains of women and men may differ

    • I can feel you move

  • 8 Learning to Share

    • Hebb: how the brain learns to associate

    • How associations in the brain create mirror neurons

    • Linking your own actions with those of others

    • Learning the difference between self and other

    • You can only mirror what you can do

    • To babble is to build a mirror system for language

    • Associating my sensations with yours

    • Why parents imitate the facial expressions of their baby

    • Associating somatosensory and motor mirroring

    • The mirror system changes throughout life

    • Why mirror neurons cannot be everywhere in the brain

    • Learning to predict

    • Learning to complement

    • Hebbian learning makes shared circuits surprisingly simple

  • 9 Autism and Misunderstandings

    • The Curious Incident–a literary introduction to autism

    • Autistic people have restricted interests

    • Autistic people neglect the social world

    • Are shared circuits impaired in autism?

    • Autistic people imitate less

    • Neuroimaging to quantify mirror system activity in autism

    • Autism is more complex than a broken mirror

    • Hebbian therapy could help in autism

    • Is a broken mirror a broken heart?

    • Birds of a feather flock together

    • The more you experienced the more you understand

    • The mirror system can lie: Implications for therapists

    • Look in your mirror and you will see a human

  • 10 Unifying Theory of Social Cognition

    • It takes both thinking and intuition to understand others

    • I learn what you learn

    • Implications for teaching: punishment and reward in public

  • 11 Empathic Ethics

    • Ethics has more to do with feelings than with thinking

    • Shared circuits are our moral voice

    • Animal Compassion

    • Moral Feelings and Learning

    • The evolutionary riddle: why do selfish genes care about others?

    • Psychopathy —the dark side of morality

    • A checklist to identify psychopaths

    • Psychopaths are glib and grandiose liars

    • Sociopaths have an impulsive and parasitic lifestyle

    • Psychopaths have a history of antisocial behavior

    • Don’t empathize: think!

    • Knowing no fear

    • The dark art of silencing empathizing

    • A day out for Patient 13

    • Moral Shields

    • I shall do to you what I wish would be done to me

    • Laws exist because of cheaters and psychopaths

  • Epilogue - Are Mirror Neurons Good or Bad

    •