Student-run speaker series: Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory

On Friday 30th at 17:00, the student-run speaker series "A spotlight on cooperation" will feature a lecture by Simone G. Shamay-Tsooray, University of Haifa, Israel.

Her presentation, entitled "The empathic brain: A two-brain approach for understanding empathy" will be held at the BCCN Lecture Hall, Philippstraße 13, Haus 6.

Abstract: Empathy allows us to understand and share one another’s emotional experiences. Despite the developments in the study of empathy, the vast majority of empathy paradigms focus only on passive observers, carrying out artificial empathy tasks in socially deprived environments. This approach significantly limits our understanding of interactive aspects of empathy and how empathic responses affect the distress of the sufferer.
We recently proposed a brain model that characterizes how empathic reactions alleviate the distress of a target. In a series of experiments, we examined brain-to-brain coupling during empathic interactions. We show that, brain-to-brain coupling in the observation-execution (mirror) network increases in empathy conditions. Critically we found that brain-to-brain coupling predicts distress regulation in the target. We extend this work to understand interaction of groups and show aberrant synchrony in autism spectrum conditions.
We conclude that employing this multi-brain approach may provide a highly controlled setting in which to study social behavior in health and disease.

Here you can find information about the next appointments!