THE ability to empathise is often considered uniquely human, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. But it might in fact be an incredibly simple brain process – meaning that there is no reason why monkeys and other animals can’t empathise too.
That’s the conclusion of Christian Keysers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and his colleagues. The team used a functional MRI scanner to monitor volunteers while their legs were touched and while they watched videos of other people being touched and of objects colliding. To the team’s surprise, a sensory area of the brain called the secondary somatosensory cortex, thought only to…
