The empathic brain

The empathic brain

Professor of Human Physiology Giacomo Rizzolatti, University of Parma, Italy

The lecture will be held in English/Foredraget afholdes på engelsk.

Professor Giacomo Rizzolatti is the latest receiver of the greatest prize in brain research, The Brain Prize. We are happy to announce that he will give the associated public lecture 'The Brain Prize public lecture' at this lecture series 'Offentlige foredrag i Naturvidenskab' (Public Lectures in Natural Science). In the lecture, he will talk about the research that led to his being awarded the prize.

Content of the lecture
Human life is characterized by complex social interchanges. It is traditionally maintained that we make sense of the behavior of others through complex inferential processes.
Giacomo and his group’s research provided evidence for a direct, empathic understanding of others’ behavior. They discovered first a specific class of neurons – mirror neurons – that discharge both when people perform a given motor act and when they observe someone else performing a similar motor act. They subsequently found that a similar mechanism is present in emotional centers.
There is a fundamental difference between inferential and direct understanding of others. In fact, only in the case of ‘empathic’ understanding, the other people are ‘like me’ and not just a physical entity (a ‘thing’). Social and medical implications of the dichotomy between inferential and empathic understanding will be discussed.

Get an impression of Giacomo Rizzolatti’s research: Listen to the broadcast at dr.dk: ‘Hjernekassen på P1’ 28 April 2014 (in Danish only).

OBS: Foredraget starter kl. 19.00, men billetten er bortfaldet ved fremmøde efter kl. 18.45. Afkrydsning sker i nærheden af elevatoren på etagen på samme niveau som søen. 

Seminaret afholdes i samarbejde med Offentlige foredrag i Naturvidenskab, Aarhus