Christian Keysers

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Christian Keysers
Born	Christian Keysers June 27, 1973 (1973-06-27) (age 36)
Nationality	German and French
Occupation	Scientist
Employer	University of Groningen

Born in 1973 in Belgium Professor Christian Keysers is a French and German neuroscientist. He finished his school education at the European School, Munich and studied psychology and biology at the University of Konstanz, the Ruhr University Bochum, University of Massachusetts, the Shepens eye research Institute of the Harvard Medical School as well as with Marvin Minsky at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then started his research career at the University of St Andrews by investigating cells in the Temporal cortex with David Perrett, and described cells that respond when the monkey views particular faces in a way that correlates with conscious perception. After that, he moved to the University of Parma where he was part of the team that discovered auditory mirror neurons in the frontal of the macaque monkey. He then expanded the notion of mirror neurons to emotions and sensations, by showing that your somatosensory cortex is active not only when you are being touched, but also if you see someone else being touched, and that your insular cortex is active not only if you feel disgusted, but also if you see someone else being disgusted. Currently, Keysers is a full Professor for the Social Brain at the medical faculty of the University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen and the scientific director of the BCN NeuroImaging Center where he leads the Social brain lab.
He is married to Neuroscientist Valeria Gazzola and a long standing friend of the German writer Bas Kast.

Current Research Focus

While we watch a movie, we share the experiences of the actors we observe: our heart for instance starts beating faster while we see an actor slip from the roof of a tall building. Why? Specific brain areas are involved when we perform certain actions or have certain emotions or sensations. Interestingly, some of these areas are also recruited when we simply observe someone else performing similar actions, having similar sensations or having similar emotions. These areas called 'shared circuits' transform what we see into what we would have done or felt in the same situation. With such brain areas, understanding other people is not an effort of explicit thought but becomes an intuitive sharing of their emotions, sensations and actions. Through the investigation of shared circuits, he attempts to understand the neural basis of empathy and its dysfunctions in autism, schizophrenia and sociopathy.

Publications

Etzel JA, Gazzola V, Keysers C, Testing Simulation Theory with Cross-Modal Multivariate Classification of fMRI Data. PlosOne, 2008, 3, Issue 11, e3690. [1].

Jabbi M, Bastiaansen J, & Keysers C(2008) A Common Anterior Insula Representation of Disgust Observation, Experience and Imagination Shows Divergent Functional Connectivity Pathways. Plos One, 3((8)), e2939 [2].

Thioux M, Gazzola V, Keysers C(2008), Action Understanding: How, What and Why, Current Biology 18:10 R431-R434.[3]

van der Gaag C, Minderaa R, Keysers C(2007), Facial expressions: What the mirror neuron system can and cannot tell us, Social Neuroscience 2:179-222.[4]

Gazzola V, van der Worp H, Mulder T, Wicker B, Rizzolatti G, Keysers C(2007) Aplasics born without hands mirror the goal of hand actions with their feet. Current Biology 17:1235-1240.[5]

Keysers C and Gazzola V(2007) Integrating simulation and theory of mind: from self to social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.[6]

van der Gaag C, Minderaa R, Keysers C(2007), The BOLD signal in the amygdala does not differentiate between dynamic facial expressions, Social Cognitive and Addective Neuroscience [7].

Gazzola V, Rizzolatti G, Wicker B, Keysers C (2007), The Anthropomorphic Brain: the mirror neuron system responds to human and robotic actions, NeuroImage [8].

Jabbi M., Swart M., Keysers C (2007), Empathy for positive and negative emotions in the gustatory cortex, Neuroimage 34:1744-53.[9]

Gazzola V, Aziz-Zadeh L, Keysers C (2006), Empathy and the somatotopic auditory mirror system in humans, Current Biology 16:1824-9.[10]

Keysers C, Gazzola V (2006), Towards a unifying neural theory of social cognition, Progress in Brain Research.[11]

Gallese V, Keysers C, Rizzolatti G (2004), A unifying view of the basis of social cognition, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 396-403.[12]

Keysers C, Wicker B, Gazzola V, Anton JL, Fogassi L, Gallese V (2004), A touching sight: SII/PV activation during the observation and experience of touch, Neuron 42: 335-346.

Keysers C, Perrett DI (2004), Demystifying social cognition: a Hebbian perspective, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 501-507.

Keysers C, Kohler E, Umilta MA, Nanetti L, Fogassi L, Gallese V (2003), Audiovisual mirror neurons and action recognition, Experimental Brain Research 153: 628-636.

Wicker B, Keysers C, Plailly J, Royet JP, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G (2003), Both of us disgusted in My Insula: The common neural basis of seeing and feeling disgust, Neuron 40: 655-664.

Kohler E, Keysers C, Umilta MA, Fogassi L, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G (2002), Hearing sounds, understanding actions: Action representation in mirror neurons, Science 297: 846-848.

Gallese V, Keysers C (2001), Mirror neurons: A sensorimotor representation system, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24: 983.

Umilta MA, Kohler E, Gallese V, Fogassi L, Fadiga L, Keysers C, Rizzolatti G (2001), I know what you are doing: A neurophysiological study, Neuron 31: 155-165.

Awards and Grants

Christian Keysers has received the prestigious Marie Curie Excellence Grant [13]of the European Commission and a VIDI Grant of the Dutch National Science Foundation[14]. He also received the highly competitive Marie Curie Excellence Award and the Research Prize of the University Medical Center Groningen. As a student he was a member of the Studienstiftung, Germany's most prestigious foundation for the promotion of excellence in study.

External links

• Website of the social brain lab[15]