Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have shown capuchin monkeys, just like humans, find giving to be a satisfying experience. This finding comes on the coattails of a recent imaging study in humans that documented activity in reward centers of the brain after humans gave to charity.

'Prof. Keysers continued, "What this means is that whether we see a movie or read a story, the same thing happens: we activate our bodily representations of what it feels like to be disgusted– and that is why reading a book and viewing a movie can both make us feel as if we literally feel what the protagonist is going through."'

By studying how people think about three different types of abstract entities—a corporation, a robot and a God—we can better understand how people think about the mind.

Do animals feel empathy? This question could draw scoffing dismissal from many scientists only a few decades ago. Now it receives marvelously productive attention in neuroscience, psychology, and the burgeoning field of neuroethology. Below, two leaders in these fields, Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal and University of Chicago neurobiologist Peggy Mason, review both the history of animal studies of empathy and a particularly thought-provoking recent mouse study from the McGill University lab of Jeffrey Mogil. As de Waal and Mason note, this clever study holds surprises about both the baseline and the limitations of empathy in these small, "simple" rodents. One can't read these reviews without seeing one's own empathetic capacities and limitations in a new light.

Would you believe that people who live with each other for 25 years actually develop similar facial features? I don't just mean that people tend to choose partners who resemble them, rather that over time together couple's features actually converge. It's weird, but there's evidence for it from a singular study carried out by the noted psychologist Robert Zajonc and colleagues.

will the H+/transhuman technologies that our accelerating future anticipates enable us to increase our empathy with others or will their use decrease our ability to understand ‘the other’ that exists outside our own selves, families, communities and cultures?

Recent findings are rapidly expanding researchers' understanding of a new class of brain cells -- mirror neurons -- which are active both when people perform an action and when they watch it being performed

Yawning may reveal more about a person than their boredom threshold, according to research