The University of Chicago
Department of Psychology
5848 South University Ave
Chicago, IL 60637
Office Phone: (773) 834-3711
Fax: (773) 702-0886
Office: Kelly Hall, 308
Labs: Kelly Hall, 310, 312, 314 and 315
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Jean Decety
Biography
Dr. Jean Decety is a professor at the University of Chicago and the College, since 2006, with a primary appointment in the Department of Psychology and a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry. He previously was a research director at the INSERM (National Medical Research Institute) in Lyon, France, and a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the head of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory (2001-2004).
Professor Decety received a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University Claude Bernard (Lyon, France) in 1989, and then completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in Sweden, at Lund University Hospital and at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm in the Departments of Clinical Neurophysiology and Neuroradiology.
Jean Decety is an Executive Committee Member of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, and a member of The Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering. He is the Editor of the new journal Social Neuroscience and serves on the editorial board of Neuropsychologia as well as the Scientific World Journal in the domain of higher level brain function.
Dr. Decety is the co-director of the Brain Research Imaging Center (BRIC) at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Research Interests and Skills
- Developmental affective neuroscience
- Antisocial personality disorder
- Conduct disorder
- Psychopathology
- Emotion regulation
- Empathy and sympathy
- Interpersonal processes
- Social cognition
- Imitation and mimicry
- Mirror-neuron systems
- Intersubjectivity
- Self/Other awareness and agency
- Human neuroanatomy and neurophysiology
Selection of Recent Publications
Decety, J., & Meyer, M. (2008). From emotion resonance to empathic understanding: A social developmental neuroscience account. Development and Psychopathology, in press.
Decety, J., & Moriguchi, Y. (2007). The empathic brain and its dysfunction in psychiatric populations: implications for intervention across different clinical conditions. BioPsychoSocial Medicine, 1, 22-65.
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.
Cheng, Y., Lin, C., Liu, H.L., Hsu, Y., Hung, D., & Decety, J. (2007). Expertise modulates the perception of pain in others. Current Biology, 17, 1708-1713.
Decety, J. & Batson, C.D. (2007). Social neuroscience approaches to interpersonal sensitivity. Social Neuroscience, 2 (3/4), 151-157.
Lamm, C., Batson, C.D., & Decety, J. (2007). The neural basis of human empathy - Effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal: An event-related fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 42-58.
Cheng, Y., Meltzoff, A., & Decety, J. (2007). Motivation modulates the activity of the human mirror-neuron system: an fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex, 17, 1979-1986.
Decety, J., & Jackson, P.L. (2006). A social neuroscience perspective on empathy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 54-58.
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(2), 179-200.
Jackson, P., Rainville, P., & Decety, J. (2006). To what extent do we share the pain of others? Insight from the neural bases of pain empathy. Pain, 125, 5-9.
Jackson, P.L., Meltzoff, A.N., and Decety, J. (2006). Neural circuits involved in imitation and perspective-taking. NeuroImage, 31, 429-439.
Jackson, P.L., Brunet, E., Meltzoff, A.N., and Decety, J. (2006). Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain: an event-related fMRI study. Neuropsychologia, 44, 752-761.
Decety, J., and Hodges, S.D. (2006). The social neuroscience of empathy. In: Bridging Social Psychology: Benefits of Transdisciplinary Approaches, ed. P.A.M. Van Lange, 103-109. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Courses
- Windows to the social mind
- The social neuroscience of empathy and sympathy
- Brain mapping workshop
- Brain imaging roundtable
More Information
Dr. Jean Decety Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab web site
Where, among other things, you can download PDF reprints, learn about current research projects, meet with the people working with me, and much more!
