events
interacting minds seminar series
place: richard mortensenstuen, aarhus university, nordre ringgade 1, dk -8000 aarhus
After a definition of the concepts ‘cognitive perspective taking’ and ‘empathy’ I will shortly revise the main results of neuroscientific studies on our ability to understand other peoples intentions and believes. I will then show several fMRI studies investigating empathic brain responses elicited by the observation of others in pain and show how these empathic brain responses are modulated by several contextual and stimulus intrinsic factors. Further results of two studies will be presented exploring the relationship between interoceptive awareness, empathy and pathologies such as Alexithymia and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). More specifically, I will show some evidence for the suggestion that impaired interoceptive awareness –a symptom observed in Alexithymia- is associated with impaired empathy but not cognitive perspective taking, the latter being frequently observed in patients with ASD. Finally, I will conclude the talk with preliminary results of three studies, one investigating the effects of oxytocin on empathy and prosocial behavior, the second one on the developmental underpinnings of our capacity for empathize and emotion control and the third one on expertise effects observed in Buddhist monks while they are engaging in different forms of compassion meditation techniques while being scanned.
SPEAKER: professor dr. tania singer
center for the study of social and neural systems, university of zürich
TITLE: understanding others: empathy and cognitive perspective taking in healthy adults and patients with asd and alexithymia
ABSTRACT
time: 2:15 pm
date: march 11th
