Expertise:
Functional brain imaging (functional MRI, Magnetoencephalography, ERPs), human neuroanatomy and physiology, cognitive neuropsychology, social/affective neuroscience, developmental neuroscience.
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? What cognitive and neural mechanisms account for a sense of self and other? To what extent this is an unconscious automatic process, or a controlled one? Why some individuals lack empathy? What is the link between empathy and moral reasoning, and prosocial behavior? These are some of the questions my research seeks to address through the interdisciplinary approach that characterizes social neuroscience.
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, especially children with aggressive conduct disorder and psychopaths.
Visit Dr. Jean Decety's Laboratory to learn more
http://scnl.org.
Recent publications:
Decety, J., Michalska, K.J., Akitsuki, Y., & Lahey, B. (2008). Atypical empathic responses in adolescents with aggressive conduct disorder: a functional MRI investigation. Biological Psychology, Epub ahead of print.
Decety, J., Michalska, K.J., & Akitsuki, Y. (2008). Who caused the pain? A functional MRI investigation of empathy and intentionality in children. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2607-2614.
Cheng, Y., Yang, C.Y., Lin, C.P., & Decety, J. (2008).
The perception of pain in others suppresses somatosensory
oscillations: a magnetoencephalography study. NeuroImage,
40, 1833-1840.
Cheng, Y., Lin, C., Liu, H.L., Hsu, Y., & Decety, J. (2007). Expertise
modulates the perception of pain in others. Current Biology, 17, 1708-1713.
Lamm, C., Batson, C.D., & Decety, J. (2007). The neural substrate of human
empathy: effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 42-58.
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.
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