READINGS

MBB
BERNHART: Empathy. BIT have shown that perceiving
someone is sad or in pain activates our same brain areas
involved in those feelings. Empathy is based on shared
representations
of
affective
states.
Situational factors and group membership affect degree of
empathy (activation in insula and cingulate cortex).
Evolutionary function of this is predicting feeling states in
self and others in order to guide adaptive homeostatic
behavioral responses and goal-directed behavior in
dynamic social contexts.
FIRTH: Interacting Minds-A Biological Basis. The ability to
metalize understand and manipulate others behavior
through their mental state- is crucial to successful social
interaction. BIT implicate mPFC in explicit representation
of states of the self- and posteriorSTS (superior temporal
sulculs) representations of other. We do this by
representing actions (imagining situations and chains of
events in our minds).
Based on: (1) our ability to distinguish between
animate/inanimate entities (2) share attention by gazefollowing (3) ability to represent goal-directed actions (4)
distinguish between actions of the self and others.
MARSHALL: Recognition that others behaviors are also
governed by the same types of mental states as ours. Our
self-perception influences how we perceive others.
Similar behavior engages the vmPFC
Dissimilar behavior engages a more dorsal subregion of
the mPFC.
MOBBS: BIT have show that humor modulates activity in
several cortical regions, engaging the NAcc, which is key

in the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward system. Degree of

humor also correlates with BOLD signal intensity.
RIZZOLATTI: The parieto-frontal cortical circuit is active
during action observation (mirror properties) and
contributes to our understanding of the actions of other in
social cognition. Its functional relevance is that it allows
the self to understand others actions from the inside; it
gives them a first-prson grasp about feelings and
intentions.
SINGER: Pain sensation and observing pain in loved ones
both activate the insula, cingulate cortex, brainstem and
cerebellum. But the neural substrate for empathic
experience does not involve the whole pain matrix but
only the part of the network associated with affective not
sensory- qualities of pain.
TAKAHASHI: Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is involved in
feelings of envy and striatum and ACC when envied
person falls from grace/suffers misfortune.