Shared Representations: Sensorimotor Foundations of Social Life (Cambridge Social Neuroscience)

Hardcover, xxx + 667pp + 16 pages of colour plates, weight 1.2kg, NOT ex-library. Gentle handling wear only. Book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- A cornerstone text in the Cambridge Social Neuroscience series, this book explores how our brains "bridge the gap" between ourselves and others. It argues that social life is built on sensorimotor foundations - the idea that we understand other people's actions, emotions, and intentions by "mapping" them onto our own motor and sensory systems. The contributors examine how observing someone else perform an action activates the same neural circuits as performing that action ourselves (often linked to the mirror neuron system). The text explores how we "share" the affective states of others, providing a biological basis for empathy and emotional contagion. A significant portion is dedicated to how two or more individuals coordinate their physical movements to achieve a common goal, such as dancing, playing music, or moving furniture. The book looks at how social factors - like power dynamics or cultural background - can actually change how these shared representations function in the brain. The volume brings together experts from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, robotics, and philosophy to answer: How do we distinguish between our own actions and the actions of others? What happens when these shared systems "malfunction," such as in cases of autism or echopraxia? Can non-human agents (like robots) trigger these same shared representation systems in the human brain.…