This year’s Social and Affective Neuroscience (SAN) meeting felt like one of those times in history when it was clear that a field was about to explode, in size, reach, and importance…
Highlights for me included Jamil Zaki and Jason Mitchell’s discussion about when empathy is accomplished by each of two distinct brain systems. One system deals with simulating the other person’s experience, and thus vicariously feeling what another feels, and the other is more cognitive, having to do with inferring the other’s mental state. A lesson we might draw from their work is that because these strategies for empathy rely on different brain systems, it seems reasonable that they need not function optimally at the same time, and that there are at least two ways to get to the same social goal.
