Jean Decety

Jean Decety (* 1960 ) is a French neuroscientist and expert in the field of Social Neuroscience. Research into the neurobiological underpinnings of interpersonal processes in general, and of empathy, sympathy and emotional self-regulation in particular are the focus of his research. Decety has the " Irving B. Harris " - professor at the University of Chicago held.

Life

Jean Decety completed his studies at the Université Claude Bernard ( Lyon I University ) with two Masters titles in Neuroscience ( 1985) and Bio-/Medizintechnik (1987 ) and a Ph.D. in Neurobiology (1989 ) from. After his graduation he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurophysiology and Neuroradiology at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, under the direction of Per Roland. Then he was up to 2001 employees at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM ) in Lyon.

Decety, Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago and the associated college. He is also director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and co-director of the Brain Imaging Center Brain Research Imaging Center. Furthermore, Decety member of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and the Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering.

Jean Decety is married to Sylvie Bendier and has two children ( Nathan and Glenn Ariel ).

In 2013 he received the Jean -Louis Signoret - Prize.

Journalistic activity

Decety is editor in chief of the journal " Social Neuroscience" and member of the editorial board of " TheScientificWorldJOURNAL " and " Neuropsychologia ". In addition, he is acting with the advisory board of the France Chicago Center.

Previous research: Cognitive Neuroscience

As part of his PhD PhD combined Jean Decety behavioral data and physiological measurements with functional brain imaging to investigate the neural basis of mental simulation of actions (see Cognitive Neuroscience ). Known as' Mental Practice of Action " or as " Motor Imagery " described technique is used among other things for athletes to improve their motor skills. In his experiments, Jean Decety able to show that mental simulation of actions physiological mechanisms for the control of heart rate and respiration, as well as the underlying neural networks ( Supplementär motoric area, Premotor cortex, cerebellum, parietal cortex and basal ganglia ) almost as strongly activated as the execution of the actual action itself, these systems are also active with pure observation of the actions of other people. These findings support the so-called Common developed by Roger Sperry Coding Theory, which is also represented by the German psychologist Wolfgang Prinz. Central argument of this theory is that actions are in terms of the observable effects that are caused by it, encoded .. Decety and his colleagues assume that this interaction of perception and action is an important prerequisite for social understanding and a functional bridge between self- - forms and external perspective.

News Research field: Social Neuroscience

The study of the neural basis of empathy, sympathy, distress, action awareness, perspective taking, emotional regulation and moral reasoning is the focus of current research projects. Recent Decety and his colleagues were able to show that the observation of pain in others the same neural circuits activated, as the perception of pain in his own body. This basal sensorimotor resonance with respect to the distress of others plays an important role in the development of empathy and moral reflection. The knowledge of this relationship is meaningful insofar as they provide a better understanding of different diseases that are associated with reduced capacity for empathy and underdeveloped moral understanding.

In the context of current studies Decety and his colleagues investigate, inter alia, to persons detained with antisocial personality disorders and children with Conduct Disorder changes in neuronal networks that underlie emotional regulation and empathy, with a wide variety of processes are used ( functional magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor Imaging analysis of eye movements and pupillometry, measuring the response of the autonomic nervous system and tests of the behavior ). Decety cooperates with several universities in the U.S., as well as in Chile, Taiwan, Japan and Germany.

Contributions to empathy research

According to Jean Decety is empathy requires the ability to perceive own and others' feelings and to integrate an image with the correct mapping of the origin of emotions in the sense of " Meinhaftigkeit " must be ensured. Empathy thus allows us to quickly and automatically feel sympathy for the lives of our fellow human beings and is an indispensable component of successful social interaction. The theories on the development of moral behavior, according to this empathy is the essential foundation moral understanding and action, and thus becomes the main motivation for altruism, but also helps to prevent antisocial behavior in. Many psychiatric and psychosomatic diseases are associated with a diminished capacity for empathy, which is based on structural and functional changes in the underlying neural circuits. After Decety empathic experience requires three interact with each other and actual non-separable basic components: So was based emotional participation ( 1 ) on the attention ( 2 ) in respect of own and others' emotions and going through emotional regulation ( 3 ) in the sense of prevention of excessive affective reactions controlled. Only this last and so essential to the essence of empathy enables the classification of emotions in the sense of preservation, " Meinhaftigkeit ". Decety argues that just an impairment of these regulatory function to excessive self-reference leads in response to the perception of foreign emotions and distress. Assuming that our emotional between human experience is essentially based on the perception and interpretation of acts of our counterparts, the consciousness is gaining a significant meaning beyond pure motor function and interaction of the origin own and others' actions. Here now closes the circle with Jean Decety 's earlier research on the perception and action planning. In practice, just empathy for pain has so far emerged as a suitable model for share- acquiring experience, as this is a fundamental experience and already have a solid knowledge of the neurophysiological processes and the involved brain areas ( Somatosensory Cortex, Supplementär motoric area, anterior cingulate cortex, insula, periaqueductal gray and thalamus ) is.

In a series of imaging studies and magnetoencephalography experiments Decety and his colleagues were able to show that the sympathy for the pain of another person aversion in the viewer triggers, which is mediated by brain areas that are involved as somatosensory Spiegel euro areas in the processing of nociceptive information. This participation allows for the integration of the affective experience of others and one's own emotional experience with consequences at the behavioral level. Together with other factors such as personal disposition, biography, motivation, context, and the capacity for emotional self-regulation leads to the degree of overlap of the activations of the neural Schmerzmatrices of observer and immediately pain experience Descending person the viewer to distress in terms of a self-centered motivation, or to sympathy and altruism as an expression of concern for people -centered towards emotional response. This distinction refers to the results of the research of social psychologist Daniel Batson, cooperates with the Decety.

Selected works

• Decety, J. (2007). A social cognitive neuroscience model of human empathy. In E. Harmon - Jones & P. Winkielman (Eds.), Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior (pp. 246-270 ). New York: Guilford Publications.
• Lamm, C., Batson, C.D., & Decety, J. (2007). The neural substrates of human empathy: effects of perspective -taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 42-58.
• Decety, J., & Grezes, J. (2006). The power of simulation: Imagining one's own and other 's behavior. Brain Research, 1079, 4-14.
• Decety, J., & Lamb, C. ( 2007). The role of the right temporoparietal junction in social interaction: How low-level computational processes Contribute to meta- cognition. The Neuroscientist, 13, 580-593.
• Decety, J. ( 2005). Perspective taking as the royal avenue to empathy. In B. F. Malle & SD Hodges (Eds.), Other Minds: How Humans Bridge the Divide in between Self and Others, (pp. 135-149 ). New York: Guilford Publishers.

Issued books

• The Social Neuroscience of Empathy ( 2009). J. Decety and W. Ickes (Eds.). Cambridge: MIT Press, Cambridge.
• Interpersonal Sensitivity: Entering Others ' Worlds (2007). J. Decety and C.D. Batson (Eds.). Hove: Psychology Press.
• Perception and Action: Recent Advances in Cognitive Neuropsychology (1998). Decety J. ( Ed. ). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.