A new article on
Empathy, Philosophy, Psychopathology and Cognitive Neuroscience has been published
with the contribution of Crossing Dialogues. Its title is “The many faces of
empathy, between phenomenology and neuroscience”, and the abstract is the
following:
The definition of empathy
differs among the domains which deal with it. Introduced in medicine and
psychology in the late 19th-early 20th century, it received contrasting
definitions from philosophers and psychopathologists. The neuroscience paradigm
of empathy for pain allowed us to identify two components of empathy, one
automatic, bottom-up, and one cognitive, top-down.
The role of mirror neurons in this context appears to be
central. Empathy is influenced by perception of other, closeness, belonging to
a social group, and gender, with women empathizing more than men. The areas
involved are the self-other distinction areas (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and
temporoparietal junction), the anterior insula, and the anterior cingulate.
The activations identified
in the brain allow for better understanding the phenomenon, but not to draw a consensus
definition. Rather than providing responses, the neurosciences send back to philosophy new, formidable questions
to be asked.
The
paper has been published on the Archives of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 2013;
4 : 5-12. A free download is available at: http://www.archivespp.pl/uploads/images/2013_15_4/5Aragona_APP_4_2013.pdf
