"Our brain has been shaped by millions of years as social primates. The mirror neurons that we inherited allow us to connect with others and make their situation our own. Here, Christian Keysers offers a lively close-up look at how the brain handles and generates empathy, making for an exciting read for anyone interested in the gentler side of our species."
Christian Keysers
"Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral."
Christian Keysers is French and German and was born in Belgium. He studied Biology and Psychology in Germany and Boston and made his PhD in St Andrews with David Perrett on the neural basis of facial perception.
In 2000, he moved to Parma, Italy to work with Giacomo Rizzolatti on the Mirror Neuron System. He contributed to the discovery of auditory mirror neurons in primates and showed that the idea of mirror neurons also applies to our emotions and sensations using fMRI in humans.
He then moved to Groningen, the Netherlands, where he became a full professor for the social brain in 2008. Since 2010, he moved to Amsterdam to become a department head at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, a research institute of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is an associate editor of the journals Social Neuroscience and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and Philosophical Transactions B. His work has been published in leading journals, including science, neuron, trends in cognitive sciences, nature reviews neuroscience and current biology.
He is also member of the Young Academy of Europe.
His book The Empathic Brain received the gold medal for best Science Book in 2012.
The schedule
-
6.00 - 8.00 p.m.
Optional visit the expo 'COMPASSION' -
8.00 p.m.
Welcome by UCSIA & introduction by Museum MAS -
8.15 p.m.
Lecture by Christian Keysers (Professor of Social Neuroscience, University of Amsterdam) -
8.55 p.m.
Response by Stephan Claes (Professor of Psychiatry, KU Leuven) -
9.15 p.m.
Q&A -
9.30 p.m.
Ending
