Ruth Leys – The Chameleon Effect: Imitation, Emotion, and Mirror Neurons

The Rifkind Room, North Academic Center 6/316, The City College of New York

Speaker: Ruth Leys, Henry Wiesenfeld Professor of Humanities, Johns Hopkins University

What are the stakes of the recent attempt to explain imitation in corporeal terms as caused by the automatic actions of mirror neurons in the brain?  Are recent assumptions about the role of mirror neurons in emotional contagion justified in the light of empirical findings?  Are human being “chameleons” or “resonance” machines?

Ruth Leys is a historian of the human sciences with a special interest in the history of the neurosciences, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry.  Her books include Trauma: A Genealogy (Chicago, 2000); and From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After (Princeton, 2007).  Her book, The Ascent of Affect: From the 1960s to the Millennium (Chicago), will appear in the fall of 2017.

This event is free and open to the public.