Cognitive and Affective Empathy c/o Simon Baron-Cohen

   New Scientist 3311

"At the bottom, Nicholas Conard, archaeologist and director of the nearby museum in Blaubeuren, Germany, pointed to a layer of rock. 'Right here is 20,000 years ago,' he said. Then he pointed about a metre lower. 'Here, we are at 40,000 years ago.' 

I was in awe, suddenly aware that I was standing where our early human ancestors lived and breathed so long ago. But it was what they invented that inspired my trip. Hohle Fels is where, in 2008, Conard and his colleagues discovered the earliest known musical instrument, a flute carved from a vulture bone that is thought to be about 40,000 years old.

It is the product of what I argue are parallel revolutions in human cognition. In my career studying the human brain through the lens of understanding autism, I have devoted a lot of time to understanding empathy, its role in our evolution and how it still underpins human interaction today. But around the same time that the brain changes arose that enabled us to use empathy, another equally critical set of changes took place: the evolution of a pattern-seeking brain network, what I refer to as the systemising mechanism, that provides the foundation for human invention - including that of musical instruments." p.34.

INDIVIDUAL

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     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

"One of these circuits, the empathy circuit, enabled a raft of new behaviours, including the ability to deceive others, teaching, self-reflection, social "chess" and flexible communication that relied on shared reference, including storytelling. These explain why modern humans could make stealth weapons and jewellery: we were keeping track of what others might think, know, intend, feel, want and believe." p.36. COGNITIVE EMPATHY theory of mind

AFFECTIVE EMPATHY "- the drive to respond to another person's mental state with an appropriate emotion." p.36.

Baron-Cohen, S. (2020) Our Restless Minds, New Scientist, 248: 3311, pp.34-39.

Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University

The Pattern Seekers, Simon Baron-Cohen.