לוח שנה משולב

Primates live in environments characterized by continuous, complex cycles of social interactions, where the actions of any group member necessarily influences those of the other members. This raises the question of the extent to which adaptive behavior in social encounters involves specialized mechanisms to represent others’ intentions and affective states. In my talk, I will explore this topic at the behavioral level - asking whether monkeys take into account the welfare of their conspecific when making decisions- and at the brain level - asking what type of information about a social partner is encoded by single neurons in the amygdala and anterior insula. I will try yo argue that these two structures carry neuronal mechanisms for empathy and perspective taking.