Jean Decety

Infobox Scientist


image_width = 150px
name = Jean Decety
birth_date = 1960
birth_place = France
death_date =
death_place =
residence = flagicon|USA Chicago, USA
nationality = flagicon|France French
field = Social Neuroscience
work_institution = University of Chicago (Professor)
alma_mater = Université Claude Bernard, Lyon; France
doctoral_advisor = Marc Jeannerod
doctoral_students =
known_for =
prizes =
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Jean Decety is a neuroscientist and an internationally recognized expert in social neuroscience. His research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, particularly empathy, sympathy, emotional self-regulation and more generally interpersonal processes.

Background

Jean Decety received two advanced Master degrees in 1985 (neuroscience) and in 1987 (biological and medical engineering sciences) and a Ph.D. in 1989 (neurobiology) from the Université Claude Bernard. After receiving his doctorate, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm in the Departments of Neurophysiology and Neuroradiology under the supervision of Per Roland. He then joined the National Institute for Medical Research (INSERM) in Lyon until 2001.

Decety is currently professor at the University of Chicago and its College, with appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry. He is the director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory [ [http://scnl.org/ Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory Homepage] ] and co-director of the Brain Research Imaging Center [ [http://bric.bsd.uchicago.edu/ Brain Research Imaging Center Homepage] ] at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Decety is an executive committee member of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience [ [http://ccsn.uchicago.edu/ Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Homepage] ] and a member of the Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering [ [http://www.cinnresearch.org/mission.html/ Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering Homepage] ] .

He married Sylvie Bendier in 1993 and has two sons (Nathan and Glenn Ariel).

Editorial duties

Decety serves as the editor in chief of "Social Neuroscience" [ [http://www.psypress.com/socialneuroscience/ "Social Neuroscience", Journal Homepage] ] and is on the editorial boards of "TheScientificWorldJOURNAL" [ [http://www.thescientificworld.com/ "TheScientificWorldJOURNAL", Journal Homepage] ] and "Neuropsychologia". [ [http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/247/description#description/ "Neuropsychologia", Journal Homepage] ] Decety is a member of the faculty advisory committee of the France Chicago Center. [ [http://fcc.uchicago.edu// France Chicago Center Homepage] ]

Early research

During his Ph.D. training and onwards, Decety combined behavioral, physiological and functional neuroimaging measures to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in mental simulation of action, also known as Mental Practice of Action or motor imagery, a technique used by athletes to rehearse and improve their performance. A series of experiments demonstrated that mental simulation can activate heart and respiration control mechanisms almost to the same extent as actual behavior.Citation | last = Decety | first = Jean | author-link = Jean_Decety | title = Central activation of autonomic effectors during mental simulation of motor actions in man | journal = Journal of Physiology | volume = 461 | pages = 549-563 | date = 1993 | year = 1993 ] Imagining an action or actually performing that action share similar neural circuits, including the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, cerebellum, parietal cortex and basal ganglia Citation | last = Decety | first = Jean | author-link = Jean_Decety | title = Mapping motor representations with positron emission tomography | journal = Nature | volume = 371 | pages = 600-602 | date = 1994 | year = 1994 ] , and these circuits are also activated when one observes an action executed by another individual.Citation | last = Decety | first = Jean | author-link = Jean_Decety | title = Brain activity during observation of actions. Influence of action content and subject’s strategy | journal = Brain | volume = 120 | pages = 1763-1777 | date = 1997 | year = 1997 ] These findings support the common coding theory between perception and action put forward by Roger Sperry and more recently by German psychologist Wolfgang Prinz. The core assumption of the common coding theory is that actions are coded in terms of the perceivable effects (i.e., the distal perceptual events) they should generate. [Hommel, B., Müsseler, Aschersleben, G. and Prinz, W. (2001). The theory of event coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 849-937.] Performing a movement leaves behind a bidirectional association between the motor pattern it has generated by and the sensory effects that it produces. Such an association can then be used backwards to retrieve a movement by anticipating its effects. [Prinz, W. (2003). Experimental approaches to action. In J. Roessler & N. Eilan (Eds.). Agency and Self-awareness (pp. 175-187). Oxford: Oxford University Press.] Decety and colleagues proposed that this perception–action coupling mechanism offers an interesting foundation for intersubjectivity because it provides a functional bridge between first-person information and third-person information, grounded on self-other equivalence Citation | last = Decety | first = Jean | author-link = Jean_Decety | title = Shared representations between self and others: A social cognitive neuroscience view | journal = Trends in Cognitive Sciences | volume = 7 | pages = 527-533 | date = 2003 | year = 2003 ] [Jackson, P.L., & Decety, J. (2004). Motor cognition: A new paradigm to investigate social interaction. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, 1-5. ] which allows analogical reasoning, and offers a possible route to understanding others. [Sommerville, J. A., & Decety, J. (2006). Weaving the fabric of social interaction: Articulating developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the domain of motor cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 179-200.]

Current research

Later research includes the neurobiological investigation of empathy, sympathy, personal distress, perspective taking, and emotion regulation in healthy individuals as well as people with social behavior disorders.Citation | last = Decety | first = Jean | author-link = Jean_Decety | title = The empathic brain and its dysfunction in psychiatric populations: implications for intervention across different clinical conditions | journal = BioPsychoSocial Medicine | volume = 1 | pages = 22-65 | date = 2007 | year = 2007 ] Decety has collaborators in Taiwan, Japan, and Germany. In a series of functional MRI and magnetoencephalographic studies, Decety and his colleagues have shown that when children or adults watch other people in pain, the neural circuits underpinning the processing of first-hand experience of pain are activated in the observer. [Decety, J. et al. (2008). "Who caused the pain? A functional MRI investigation of empathy and intentionality in children." Neuropsychologia, 46, 2607-2614.] This basic somatic sensorimotor resonance plays a critical role in the primitive building block of empathy and moral reasoning that relies on the sharing of other’s distress. Such results are important, because appreciating the brain’s role in responding to the pain of others can help us understand children who exhibit social cognitive disorders (e.g., antisocial personality disorder and conduct disorder) and are often deficient in experiencing empathic concern or guilt. Current research explores the neurological mechanisms that underpin the function and dysfunction of empathy and its expression in individuals who vary in psychopathic traits, including incarcerated psychopaths, by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging, structural and diffusion tensor imaging, gaze analysis and pupillometry, autonomic nervous system measurements, and behavioral responses.

elected works

*Decety, J. (2007). “A social cognitive neuroscience model of human empathy.” In E. Harmon-Jones & P. Winkielman (Eds.), Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior (pp. 246-270). New York: Guilford Publications.
*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., & Grezes, J. (2006). “The power of simulation: Imagining one's own and other's behavior.” Brain Research, 1079, 4-14.
*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.
*Decety, J. (2005). “Perspective taking as the royal avenue to empathy.” In B.F. Malle, & S. D. Hodges (Eds.), Other Minds: How Humans Bridge the Divide between Self and Others, (pp. 135-149). New York: Guilford Publishers.

References

ee also

* Cognitive neuropsychology
* Neuroscience
* Social neuroscience
* Social psychology
* Psychiatry
* Antisocial behavior
* Moral reasoning
* Empathy

External links

* Journal [http://www.psypress.com/socialneuroscience/ Social Neuroscience]
* [http://scnl.org/ Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago]
* [http://ccsn.uchicago.edu/ Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience]
* [http://beta.uchicago.edu/ The University of Chicago]