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The Social Neuroscience of Empathy and Sympathy

How do we understand each other? Why and how do we care about others? If we put ourselves into the mental shoes of another person, how closely do we really feel what she feels? What cognitive and neural mechanisms account for an awareness of self and other? How do these mechanisms develop in babies and children? What neural circuits underpin the experience of empathy? How did these circuits evolved in the mamalian brain? Is empathy an innate ability or a learned skill? What is the difference between empathy, personal distress and sympathy or empathic concern? What aspects (if any) of empathy are specific to humans. Is empathy the source of moral reasoning? Why do some individuals lack empathic concern? What are the relations between empathy and prosocial behavior, moral reasoning, and sympathy? What are the benefits and the costs of being (too) empathetic? How empathy is modulated by unconscious processing (e.g., group membership) and by meta-cognition (e.g., beliefs, ideologies).

Course Objective
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate and graduate students to the fundamentals of social neuroscience. The focus of this course will be on interpersonal sensitivity, how people perceive and experience and respond to the internal states (e.g., cognitive, affective, motivational) of another, and predict the subsequent events that will result. The study of empathy and sympathy serves as the basis for integrating a variety of data and theories from evolutionary biology, social psychology, cognitive and affective neuroscience, developmental psychology, clinical neuropsychology and psychiatry.

Method
One lecture (1 h 20 long) and one disussion session (1 h 20) every week.
The course will explore the study of empathy and sympathy from the perspective of social neuroscience by articulating different levels of understanding, spanning from social sciences to evolutionary biology. The first week will serve as an introduction to the field and will be devoted to basic philosophical concepts of empathy and its functions in social interaction. Weeks 2 and 3 will examine the contribution of social psychology to the domain of empathy and altruism. Week 4 will be devoted to the development of emotional understanding, theory of mind and moral cognition in infants and young children. Week 5 will look at empathy and sympathy in terms of adaptive neural, autonomic and neuroendocrine systems. Weeks 6 and 7 will focus on the neural mechanisms that underpin the experience of empathy, from single-unit recordings in nonhuman primates to neural systems studies in humans with functional neuroimaging techniques. Week 8 will discuss various social cognitive disorders in neurological and psychiatric patients, including autistic spectrum disorder, antisocial personality disorders, conduct disorder and psychopathy. Week 9 will review, summarize, and connect the dots from the previous classes. Week 10 is the reading week for preparation for the final exam.

Reading Material
The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (Decety and Ickes, Eds.) will serve as a reference textbook for this course. There will be assigned readings every week, with additional readings for graduate students. Typically, undergraduate students will be required to read and discuss 2 papers each week.

Class Requirements
For undergraduate students, there will be one final written exam. Weekly reading assignments will also contribute to the final grade, as well as participation in class discussion.

Course syllabus available on Chalk