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A classical theoretical frame to interpret motor reactions to emotional stimuli is that such stimuli, particularly those threat-related, are processed preferentially, i.e., they are capable of capturing and grabbing attention automatically. Research has recently challenged this view, showing that the task relevance of emotional stimuli is crucial to having a reliable behavioral effect. Such evidence indicated that emotional facial expressions do not automatically influence motor responses in healthy young adults, but they do so only when intrinsically pertinent to the ongoing subject’s goals. Given the theoretical relevance of these findings, it is essential to assess their generalizability to different, socially relevant emotional stimuli such as emotional body postures. To address this issue, we compared the performance of 36 right-handed participants in two different versions of a Go/No-go task. In the Emotional Discrimination task, participants were required to withhold their responses at the display of emotional body postures (fearful or happy) and to move at the presentation of neutral postures. Differently, in the control task, the same images were shown, but participants had to respond according to the color of the actor/actress’ t-shirt, disregarding the emotional content. Results showed that participants made more commission errors (instances in which they moved even though the No-go signal was presented) for happy than fearful body postures in the Emotional Discrimination task. However, this difference disappeared in the control task. Such evidence indicates that, like facial emotion, emotional body expressions do not influence motor control automatically, but only when they are task-relevant.

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Background Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) feel rejected even when socially included. The pathophysiological mechanisms of this rejection bias are still unknown. Using the Cyberball paradigm, we investigated whether patients with BPD, display altered physiological responses to social inclusion and ostracism, as assessed by changes in Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA). Methods The sample comprised 30 patients with BPD, 30 with remitted Major Depressive Disorder (rMDD) and 30 Healthy Controls (HC). Self-report ratings of threats toward one’s fundamental need to belong and RSA reactivity were measured immediately after each Cyberball condition. Results Participants with BPD showed lower RSA at rest than HC. Only patients with BPD, reported higher threats to fundamental needs and exhibited a further decline in RSA after the Inclusion condition. Conclusions Individuals with BPD experience a biased appraisal of social inclusion both at the subjective and physiological level, showing higher feelings of ostracism and a breakdown of autonomic regulation to including social scenarios.

Throughout evolution, the human motor system has acquired progressively more complex properties concerning motor learning, the hierarchical control of serial behaviour and the fluidity of motor output, despite a slow transmission system connected to the body periphery. Since evolution tends to be conservative, it would not be surprising if many of these solutions had been exploited in another area, as the development of a very sophisticated communication system, such as language was at first. The implications of this hypothesis for a renewed neuro-scientific understanding of the human language will be discussed in this paper., SAIL

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the nature of our social interactions. In order to understand how protective equipment and distancing measures influence the ability to comprehend others’ emotions and, thus, to effectively interact with others, we carried out an online survey across the Italian population during the first pandemic peak. Participants were shown static facial expressions (Angry, Happy and Neutral) covered by a sanitary mask or by a scarf. They were asked to evaluate the expressed emotions as well as to assess the degree to which one would adopt physical and social distancing measures for each stimulus. Results demonstrate that, despite the covering of the lower-face, participants correctly recognized the facial expressions of emotions with a polarizing effect on emotional valence ratings found in females. Noticeably, while females’ ratings for physical and social distancing were driven by the emotional content of the stimuli, males were influenced by the “covered” condition. The results also show the impact of the pandemic on anxiety and fear experienced by participants. Taken together, our results offer novel insights on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social interactions, providing a deeper understanding of the way people react to different kinds of protective face covering.

Pourquoi, après des décennies de critique, de discrédit, voire d’ignorance, l’empathie connaît-elle aujourd’hui un regain d’intérêt théorique en philosophie, en psychanalyse et en sciences sociales ? C’est à cette question que cet ouvrage collectif souhaite répondre en interrogeant les recherches contemporaines sur l’empathie à partir de ses paradoxes théoriques, cliniques et moraux : une compréhension d’autrui à la fois affective et cognitive, identificatoire et sélective, automatique et inégalement distribuée. En examinant les perspectives récemment ouvertes qui montrent l’empathie sous un jour nouveau, en prenant en compte la complexité de son histoire et de ses modèles, la diversité de ses pratiques et de ses usages, les auteurs proposent des analyses originales qui la remettent au cœur d’une dialectique de l’affectivité et de la représentation, de l’intersubjectivité et des rapports sociaux, de l’expérience individuelle et de l’expérience sociale. Cet ouvrage s’appuie sur des rencontres et des programmes de recherche pluridisciplinaires qui renouvellent l’approche de l’empathie, en examinent les mécanismes, les usages et la portée dans les sciences sociales, la philosophie morale et sociale, et la psychanalyse. Il constituera un instrument irremplaçable de découverte, d’approfondissement et de critique d’une notion qui a enfin trouvé toute sa place dans la pensée contemporaine.

Les primates, et notamment les êtres humains, sont des animaux sociaux dont le développement cognitif se nourrit des interactions avec les autres animaux de leur espèce (les adultes, la fratrie, etc.). Lors des interactions sociales, nous manifestons en effet nos intentions, dispositions et pensées intérieures par la médiation de notre comportement. De manière similaire, nous essayons de deviner ce que sont les intentions, dispositifs et pensées des autres quand nous observons leur comporteme...

Why do humans create images and what are their features that make them special? How are image-making and the uses of images related? What is the purpose of images? The “problem of images” is addressed through the lens of contemporary neuroscience, arguing why and how neuroscience can investigate our relationship with art and aesthetics, framing this empirical approach as “experimental aesthetics.” Recent discoveries are presented that changed our ideas about perception, action, and cognition and the relationship among them, allowing a new look—complementary to the humanistic approach—at the problem of images. A new model of perception and cognition is proposed, called embodied simulation, which reveals the constitutive relationship between brain-body and the reception of human creative expressions., Phenomenology and Mind, No 14 (2018): Perception and Aesthetic Experience

In the last decade, thanks to the development of new experimental techniques, the studies on human brain carried out relevant advances. Many researcher started off with new analysis fields, placed at the interface between neural and social sciences (economics, sociology, politology, law, psychology, and even aesthetics, ethics and theology). Such interdisciplinary outcomes oscillate between approaches reducing human behaviour to the neural bases and approaches aiming to integrate neural and social sciences.These new developments of the relationship between neural and social sciences provoked animated controversies, also referring to the over-simplified versions of the neuroscience outcomes frequently published by popular scientific information.In this section of the journal, four scholars (Vittorio Gallese, Rosaria Conte, Sergio Manghi, Vincenzo Pavone) from different disciplines are facing the main issues raised by ongoing controversies, thus contributing to clarify the main theoretical, epistemological and moral points.

This paper explores the sense of touch in relation to social cognition offering a new take on multisensory integration in the brain, within the framework of Embodied simulation (ES) theory. ES provides a new empirically based notion of intersubjectivity, viewed first and foremost as intercorporeality. In relation to touch, by means of ES we do not just “see” a sensation experienced by someone else and then understand it through an inference by analogy. By means of ES we can map others’ sensations by re-using our own motor, somatosensory and viscero-motor representations. ES provides an original and unitary account of basic aspects of intersubjectivity, demonstrating how deeply our making sense of others’ living and acting bodies is rooted in the power of re-using our own motor, somatosensory and viscero-motor resources., Phenomenology and Mind, No 4 (2013): Sense and Sensibility. Empirical and Philosophical Investigations on the Five Senses

The main criticism Pfeiffer advances in his commentary is that our proposal is too narrow. Embodied simulation (ES), in his view equated to motor resonance, is not a sufficiently primary mechanism on which we can base a unified neurobiological theory of the earliest sense of self and others. According to Pfeiffer, motor resonance needs to be complemented by other more basic and primary mechanisms. Hence, as an alternative to our proposal, he suggests that multisensory spatial processing can play this role, primarily contributing to the earliest foundation of the sense of self and others. In our reply we stress on the one hand that identifying ES only with motor resonance is a partial view that may give rise to fallacious arguments, since ES also deals with emotions and sensations. We also show, on the other hand, that ES and multisensory integration should not be seen as alternative solutions to the problem of the neural bases of the bodily self, because multimodal integration carried out by the cortical motor system is an instantiation of ES. We conclude by stressing the role ES might have played in the transition from bodily experience to symbolic expression., Open MIND

In this paper we propose a way in which cognitive neuroscience could provide new insights on three aspects of social cognition: intersubjectivity, the human self, and language. We emphasize the crucial role of the body, conceived as the constitutive source of pre-reflective consciousness of the self and of the other. We provide a critical view of contemporary social cognitive neuroscience, arguing that the brain level of description is a necessary but not sufficient condition for studying intersubjectivity, the human self, and language; which are only properly visible if coupled with a full appreciation of their intertwined relationship with the body. We introduce mirror mechanisms and embodied simulation and discuss their relevance to a new account of intersubjectivity and the human self. In this context, we focus on a specifically human modality of intersubjectivity: language. Aspects of social cognition related to language are discussed in terms of embodiment, while emphasizing the progress and limitations of this approach. We argue that a key aspect of human language consists in its decoupling from its usual denotative role, hence manifesting its power of abstraction. We discuss these features of human language as instantiations of the Greek notion of paradeigma, originally explored by Aristotle to refer to a typical form of rhetorical reasoning and relate it to embodied simulation. Paradigmatic knowledge connects the particular with the particular, moving from the contingent particular situation to an exemplary case. Similarly, embodied simulation is the suspension of the “concrete” application of a process: reuse of motor knowledge in the absence of the movement it realizes is an example of “paradigmatic knowledge.” This new epistemological approach to intersubjectivity generates predictions about the intrinsic functional nature of our social cognitive operations, cutting across, and not subordinated to, a specific ontology of mind., Open MIND

Questa intervista è stata realizzata dalla redazione di Ricerche di S/Confine in occasione di questo numero monografico della rivista, dedicato al tema dello specchio. Vittorio Gallese è professore di Fisiologia presso il Dipartimento di Neuroscienze dell’Università degli Studi di Parma, dove è anche coordinatore del programma di dottorato in Neuroscienze e direttore della Scuola di dottorato in Medicina. Neuroscienziato cognitivo, la sua ricerca si concentra sulla descrizione incarnata degli aspetti più rilevanti della cognizione sociale. Il suo principale contributo consiste nella scoperta, insieme ai suoi colleghi di Parma, dei neuroni specchio e nell'elaborazione di un modello teorico di cognizione sociale, la teoria della Simulazione Incarnata (Embodied Simulation ).. La sua attività scientifica è documentata da più di duecento pubblicazioni scientifiche su riviste internazionali peer-reviewed e volumi. Ha ricevuto il Grawemeyer Award for Psychology nel 2007, il premio Musatti nel 2014, la Laurea Honoris Causa dall’Università Cattolica di Lovanio nel 2010, e l’Arnold Pfeffer Prize for Neuropsychoanalysis nel 2010. The editors of Ricerche di S/Confine interviewed Vittorio Gallese on the occasion of this monographic issue of the journal, dedicated to the theme of the mirror. Vittorio Gallese, MD and trained neurologist, is Professor of Physiology at the Dept. of Neuroscience of the University of Parma where is Coordinator of the PhD Program in Neuroscience and Director of the Doctoral School of Medicine. Cognitive neuroscientist, his research focuses on an embodied account of social cognition. His major contribution is the discovery, together with his colleagues of Parma, of mirror neurons and the elaboration of a theoretical model of social cognition – Embodied Simulation Theory. His scientific activity is testified by more than 200 scientific publications in peerreviewed international scientific journals and edited books. He received the Grawemeyer Award for Psychology in 2007, the Musatti prize in 2014, the Doctor Honoris Causa from the Catholic University of Leuven in 2010, and the Arnold Pfeffer Prize for Neuropsychoanalysis in 2010.

The mirror mechanism allows the direct translation of a perceived (seen, felt, heard) action into the same motor representation of its related goal. This mechanism allows a direct comprehension of others' goals and motor intentions, enabling an embodied link between individuals. Because the mirror mechanism is a functional expression of the motor system, these findings suggest the relevance of the motor system to social cognition. It has been hypothesized that the impaired understanding of others' intentions, sensations, and emotions reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could be linked to an alteration of the mirror mechanism in all of these domains. In this review, we address the theoretical issues underlying the social impairments in ASD and discuss them in relation to the cognitive role of the mirror mechanism.

Neuroaesthetics is a relatively young field within cognitive neuroscience, concerned with the neural underpinnings of aesthetic experience of beauty, particularly in visual art. Neuroscientific investigations have approached this area using imaging and neurophysiological techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG). The results produced so far are very heterogeneous. Nonetheless, an overall view of the findings suggests that the aesthetic experience of visual artworks is characterized by the activation of: sensorimotor areas; core emotional centres; and reward-related centres. In the present review, we discuss the functional relevance of these activations and propose that aesthetic experience is a multilevel process exceeding a purely visual analysis of artworks and relying upon visceromotor and somatomotor resonance in the beholder.

The implications of the discovery of mirroring mechanisms and embodied simulation for empathetic responses to images in general, and to works of visual art in particular, have not yet been assessed. Here, we address this issue and we challenge the primacy of cognition in responses to art. We propose that a crucial element of esthetic response consists of the activation of embodied mechanisms encompassing the simulation of actions, emotions and corporeal sensation, and that these mechanisms are universal. This basic level of reaction to images is essential to understanding the effectiveness both of everyday images and of works of art. Historical, cultural and other contextual factors do not preclude the importance of considering the neural processes that arise in the empathetic understanding of visual artworks.