empathy

What's So Funny?

A guy getting hit in the crotch with a football is funny (unless that guy is you of course). Every time. I think it’s hard-wired in the brain, at least for males. Perhaps it’s a caveman mentality holdover – we have lots of these, by the way. A rival who receives reproductive trauma might not end up as a rival at all, at least in the genetic rat race. Those cavemen were pretty sophisticated.

Empathy: It's In the Genes

A recent study involving highly social mice hypothesizes that the ability to empathize may be rooted deeply in genetics. In testing, researchers observed cross sections of mice behavior when a mouse's distressed squeak was played. The more social mice responded to the distress calls, while a different genetic strain of mice did not.

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Wed, 02/11/2009 - 13:14

Empathy Can Be Seen In Brain Imaging

U.S. Researchers, monitoring children's brains, observed that when these children were shown animated examples of something painful happening to a character, brain activity in the regions of the brain known to house empathy were active. The brain circuits that were involved were the same ones that are utilized when a person experiences pain first hand.

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Fri, 07/11/2008 - 10:18
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