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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? Why do some people lack empathy? What cognitive and neural mechanisms account for a sense of self and other? To what extent do we share the joy or the pain of others? How do we regulate our emotions? Is this regulation automatic and unconscious, or intentional and controlled? These are some of the questions our research seeks to address through the interdisciplinary approach that characterizes social neuroscience.

Our research is grounded in the model of shared representations between self and other (Decety & Sommerville, 2003). While the basic idea behind what constitutes a shared representation has been presented before (e.g., Bruner, 1990; Jeannerod, 1999), our studies have elaborated on their significance to empathy, sympathy, as well as their role in self-monitoring, self regulation, and the capacity to reflect on our own cognition. In cognitive neuroscience the model of shared representations accounts for the finding that brain circuits employed during the generation, imagination, and observation of one’s own behavior are also utilized in representations of other’s behavior. The notion of shared representations partly overlaps with the mirror-neuron systems. In our laboratory, we investigate the nature of this neural and computational overlap, particularly with regards to empathy and sympathy, and more generally what is called interpersonal sensitivity (Decety & Batson, 2007). We also argue that self-awareness and agency are crucial for navigating the shared nature of our joint representations, and are essential properties of any autonomous agent. Indeed, social cognition relies both on similarities and differences between individuals. To be an agent is to influence intentionally - through cognitive self-regulation - one's functioning and life circumstances. This sense of agency constitutes a major dimension of moral experience: without agency we would not feel responsible for our actions.

Social cognition is a product of a complex reciprocal interplay of intrapersonal, behavioral, and environmental determinants. It relies on both domain-general mechanisms and embodied domain-specific representations, tailored by million of years of evolution. For instance a large number of neuroimaging studies have shown that the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is involved in theory of mind, empathy, perspective taking, the sense of agency and attention orientation. The most parsimonious interpretation of this overlap suggests that activation in the TPJ during social cognition may rely on a low-level computational mechanism involved in generating, testing and correcting internal predictions about external sensory events (see Decety & Lamm, 2007; Decety & Grezes, 2006). Such an interpretation is consistent with an evolutionary view that higher levels operate on previous levels of organization, and should not be seen as independent of, or conflicting with one another. Elementary computational operations have evolved to perform social functions. Evolution has constructed layers of increasing complexity, from non-representational to representational and meta-representational mechanisms, which need to be taken into account for a full understanding of human social cognition.

Our current research centers on the issues of intersubjectivity and interpersonal processes. We have a variety of projects currently underway in the areas of:

Affective social neuroscience Developmental neuroscience Psychopathology Interpersonal processes Social emotions Empathy and sympathy Social cognitive disorders Antisocial behavior Conduct disorder Emotion regulation Perspective-taking Mirror-neuron systems Mimicry and imitation Self/Other awareness Stigma Racial bias Compassion and caring Implicit moral reasoning

All projects combine behavioral techniques, dispositional measures, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), event-related potentials (ERPs), eye-tracking and physiological measures (EMG, heart rate, arterial pressure, respiratory sinus arrhythmia), in healthy adults and children, as well as in individuals exhibiting social cognitive deficits or disorders.

Many of these projects involve inter-disciplinary collaborations with colleagues at the University of Chicago, as well as other universities in the US, Austria, Canada, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Taiwan.

See collaborations

Signature Papers

Decety, J., & Batson, C.D. (2007). Social neuroscience approaches to interpersonal sensitivity. Social Neuroscience, 2, 151-157.

Decety, J., & Lamm, 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., & Lamm, C. (2006). Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience. The Scientific World Journal, 6, 1146–1163.

Decety, J., & Grèzes, J. (2006). The power of simulation: Imagining one's own and other's behavior. Brain Research, 1079, 4-14.

Sommerville J.A., & Decety, J. (2006). Weaving the fabric of social interaction: Articulating developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the domain of motor cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13(2), 179-200.

Decety, J., & Jackson, P.L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3, 71-100.

Decety, J., & Sommerville, J.A. (2003). Shared representations between self and others: A social cognitive neuroscience view. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 527-533.

For a complete list of publications