Meditation practices aim at modifying the emotions by reducing reactivity to both pleasant and unpleasant emotions (Sperduti et al., 2012; Reva et al., 2014).Meditation also regulates the attention by reducing distractibility and directing focused attention to the object of meditation (Sperduti et al., 2012). In many meditation techniques attention is directed to ongoing experiences without the...

This opinion piece offers a commentary on the four papers that address the theme of the development of self and other understanding with a view to highlighting the important contribution of developmental research to understanding of mechanisms of social cognition. We discuss potential mechanisms linking self-other distinction and empathy, implications for grouping motor, affective and cognitive...

In social neuroscience, empathy is often approached as an individual ability, whereas researchers in anthropology focus on empathy as a dialectic process between agents. In this perspective paper, we argue that to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the development of empathy, social neuroscience research should draw on insights and methods from anthropology. First, we discuss neuropsyc...

Sir, We thank Gillespie et al. (2014) for their letter. They summarize data that suggest that in autism, vicarious activations can be relatively normal under instructions explicitly encouraging vicarious processes, while being abnormal in conditions in which instructions do not. This points to an important opportunity to improve our understanding of empathy—both with regards to deficits in pati...

This paper proposes a methodology to assess video quality, spatial and social presence, empathy, attitude, attention in 360-degree videos for immersive communications. The is validated an experiment which simulates communication environment where participants attend three conversations of different genre (everyday conversation, educational, discussion) from actor observer acquisition perspectiv...

Empathy indicates an emotional rapport, or identification, with another person. It has been introduced as a central focus for ‘sensitivity trainings’ and feedback workshops in professional settings, and the relatively new Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) movement in schools. Empathy is promoted as a hallmark of social relationships that if featured in human interactions will presumably make ...

The neuropeptide oxytocin functions as a hormone and neurotransmitter and facilitates complex social cognition and approach behavior. Given that empathy is an essential ingredient for third-party decision-making in institutions of justice, we investigated whether exogenous oxytocin modulates empathy of an unaffected third-party toward offenders and victims of criminal offenses. Healthy male par...

Fifty-one adolescent-onset anorexia nervosa (AN) cases recruited after community screening were compared with 51 age-, sex-, and school-matched cases with regard to personality disorders and autism-spectrum disorders (ASD)/empathy disorders at age 21 years. All 102 cases had originally been examined at a mean age of 16 years, slightly over a year after the reported onset of the eating disorder....

Functional imaging studies of healthy participants and previous lesion studies have provided evidence that empathy involves dissociable cognitive functions that rely on at least partially distinct neural networks that can be individually impaired by brain damage. These studies converge in support of the proposal that affective empathy--making inferences about how another person feels--engages a...

CONTEXT There is a need for studies specifically addressing the barriers to empathy training from the perspective of medical students. The objective of this study was to evaluate attitudes of 3rd and 4th year medical students regarding their training in clinical empathy at a public teaching hospital and medical school. METHODS A questionnaire assessing students' satisfaction with, and opinion...