Jean Decety
Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
University of Chicago
5848 S. University Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60637
U.S.A.
Home Page
Phone: (773) 834-3711
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Dr. Jean Decety is Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. He is the co-director of the Brain Research Imaging Center at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Jean Decety is the Editor of Social Neuroscience.I was born and raised in France and attended the University Claude Bernard in Lyon as an undergraduate. Then I went to graduate school in the neuroscience program at the same University. I received my Ph.D. in 1989 (neuroscience). After that I completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in Sweden, at Lund University Hospital in clinical neurophysiology, with David Ingvar, and at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm with Per Roland in the Department of clinical neurophysiology and neuroradiology. In 1991 I got a research position at the Medical Research and Health Institute (INSERM) in Lyon where worked in the domains of cognitive neuroscience of action perception and understanding, mental imagery, imitation, perspective taking and theory of mind using positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, as well as measurements of the autonomic nervous system. In 2001, I was offered by Pat Kuhl and Andrew Meltzoff the opportunity to become the head of a new cognitive and social neuroscience Lab at he University of Washington Institute for Brain and Learning in Seattle, where I conducted research on imitation, empathy and sympathy. In 2006, I joined the University of Chicago and the College as a Professor with appointments in psychology and psychiatry. My lines of research focus on the questions: How do we understand each other? Why and how do we care about others? If we put ourselves into the mental shoes of another person, how closely do we really feel what she feels? What cognitive and neural mechanisms account for a sense of self and other? How do we regulate our emotions? What neurodevelopmental changes are associated with empathy and implicit moral reasoning in children and adolescents. My research seeks to address these aspects of social cognition and intersubjectivity through the interdisciplinary approach that characterizes social neuroscience. Research in my laboratory at the University of Chicago combines functional MRI (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERPs), autonomic nervous system measures (e.g., heart-rate variability, skin conductance), and eye-tracking with various implicit and explicit behavioral and dispositional measures. Ongoing projects in the Lab investigate how interpersonal sensitivity is modulated by various social factors such as stigma and racial biases. Current research also explores the neurological mechanisms that underpin the function and dysfunction of empathy and its expression in children and adults who vary in psychopathic traits, including incarcerated psychopaths and children with aggressive conduct disorder, by combining functional MRI, structural and diffusion tensor imaging, gaze analysis and pupillometry, autonomic nervous system measurements, and behavioral responses.
 Journal Articles:
 Cheng, Y., Lin, C., Liu, H. L., 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.
- Decety, J., Echols, S.C., & Correll, J. (2009). The blame game: the effect of responsibility and social stigma on empathy for pain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Epub ahead of print.
- 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., & Lamm, C. (2006). Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience. The Scientific World Journal, 6, 1146-1163.
- Decety, J., & Meyer, M. (2008). From emotion resonance to empathic understanding: A social developmental neuroscience account. Development and Psychopathology, 20, 1053-1080.
- Decety, J., & Michalska, K.J. (2010). Neurodevelopmental changes in the circuits underlying empathy and sympathy from childhood to adulthood. Developmental Science, Epub ahead of print.
- Decety, J., Michalska, K. J., & Akitsuki, Y. (2008). Who caused the pain? An fMRI investigation of empathy and intentionality in children. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2607-2614.
- Decety, J., Michalska, K. J., Akitsuki, Y., & Lahey, B. B. (2009). Atypical empathic responses in adolescents with aggressive conduct disorder: A functional MRI investigation. Biological Psychology, 80, 203-211.
- 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.
- Jackson, P. L., Brunet, E., Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J. (2006). Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain. Neuropsychologia, 44, 752-61.
- 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.
Other Publications:
- 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.
- Decety, J., & Hodges, S. D. (2006). A social cognitive neuroscience model of human empathy. In P. A. M. van Lange (Ed.), Bridging social psychology: Benefits of transdisciplinary approaches (pp. 103-109). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Decety, J., & Meyer, M. (2009). Imitation as a stepping stone to empathy. In M. de Hann & M. Gunnar (Eds.), The handbook of developmental social neuroscience (pp. 142-158). New York: Guilford Publications.
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