No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2013
In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and could – paradoxically – be seen as representing the “dark matter” of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations that allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are in interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies, and related fields to argue for the development of a second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really “go social”; this may also be relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition.
Authors Leonhard Schilbach and Bert Timmermans have contributed equally to this article.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
Target article
Toward a second-person neuroscience1
Related commentaries (28)
A mature second-person neuroscience needs a first-person (plural) developmental foundation
A second-person approach cannot explain intentionality in social understanding
Advancing the neuroscience of social emotions with social immersion
Brain games: Toward a neuroecology of social behavior
From synthetic modeling of social interaction to dynamic theories of brain–body–environment–body–brain systems
From the bottom up: The roots of social neuroscience at risk of running dry?
Further steps toward a second-person neuroscience
Interaction versus observation: A finer look at this distinction and its importance to autism
It takes two to talk: A second-person neuroscience approach to language learning
Merging second-person and first-person neuroscience
Mirror neurons are central for a second-person neuroscience: Insights from developmental studies
On projecting grammatical persons into social neurocognition: A view from linguistics
Parameterising ecological validity and integrating individual differences within second-person neuroscience
Reciprocity between second-person neuroscience and cognitive robotics
Second person neuroscience needs theories as well as methods
Second-person neuroscience: Implications for Wittgensteinian and Vygotskyan approaches to psychology
Second-person social neuroscience: Connections to past and future theories, methods, and findings
Social affordances in context: What is it that we are bodily responsive to?
Social affordances: Is the mirror neuron system involved?
Social cognition is not a special case, and the dark matter is more extensive than recognized
Social perception and “spectator theories” of other minds
Talking to each other and talking together: Joint language tasks and degrees of interactivity
The brain as part of an enactive system
The second person in “I”-“you”-“it” triadic interactions
The use of non-interactive scenarios in social neuroscience
Toward a neuroscience of interactive parent–infant dyad empathy
What we can learn from second animal neuroscience
Why not the first-person plural in social cognition?
Author response
A second-person neuroscience in interaction1