CDC Seminar April 21 Tania Singer

The next talk in the Cognitive Development Center seminar series at the CEU will be given by Tania Singer (MPI Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences) Social Emotions and Cognition through the Lens of Social Neuroscience Wednesday, April 21, 5.00pm CEU Cognitive Development Center Hattyuhaz, Level 3, Hattyu u. 14., 1015 Budapest Abstract With the emergence of social neuroscience, researchers have started to investigate the underpinnings of our ability to share and understand feelings of others. After a definition of the concepts ‘cognitive perspective taking’, ‘emotion contagion’, ‘empathy’ and ‘compassion’ I will shortly revise the main results of neuroscientific studies on our ability to understand other peoples intentions and believes. I will then show several fMRI studies investigating empathic brain responses elicited by the observation of others in pain and show how these empathic brain responses are modulated by several contextual and stimulus intrinsic factors. I will then show results of studies exploring the relationship between interoceptive awareness, empathy and pathologies such as Alexithymia and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Finally, I will conclude the talk with results of ongoing projects, one on the developmental underpinnings of social emotions, emotion regulation and impulse control and one on investigation of affective plasticity based on real-time fMRI and fMRI studies with long-term meditation practitioners (Buddhist monks) and naïve non-expert practitioners focusing on brain and behavioral changes while they are engaging in different forms of compassion meditation techniques and prosocial tasks.