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| Understanding Human Ability For Joint Action |
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| SciMed - Neuroscience | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Sunday, 26 August 2007 20:00 | |||
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Searching for neurological processes that underly social behavior
Hoboken, NJ, USA. Humans are social animals and cooperative behaviour is deeply ingrained in nearly all people, but the underlying cognitive processes that make this happen are poorly understood. Humans are social animals even more than was thought, including those suffering from autism and conditions that make it hard to relate to others. The cognitive scientist Natalie Sebanz has shown that we are programmed for teamwork and strongly influenced by others around us — even when this does not appear to be in our interests.
Sebanz has achieved recognition from the European Young Investigator Awards (EURYI) from the European Science Foundation (ESF). Coming work will identify the underlying mechanisms and neurological structures underpinning the human ability to cooperate and participate jointly in tasks that require close coordination with others.
The Sebanz project will bridge the gap between the social, cognitive, and neurosciences in the domain of joint action. Cognitive science and cognitive
 neuroscience have had little to say on this topic because for many years perception, action, and cognition were studied without taking their role in social interaction seriously. Her research aims to understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting our ability to act together with others.
Joint action is a fundamental aspect of human life. For example, think about two surgeons jointly operating on a patient, two friends moving furniture together, or two pianists performing a duet. Three processes are critical for joint action:
These three processes will be investigated using a combination of behavioural, electrophysiological,
brain imaging and patient studies. The combination of these methods will allow for a detailed understanding of the mechanisms involved in joint action. Overall, the project is expected to establish joint action as one of the central topics in social cognitive neuroscience. Sebanz believes her work will lead to a better understanding of the processes involved in joint action and so enable significant progress to be made in science, education, and engineering. “It can improve our understanding of human cognition, improve our understanding of disorders of social cognition like autism, and help to determine factors that enhance the quality of interpersonal coordination in educational settings such as teacher-student interactions,” said Sebanz.
There is also the potential for exploiting such knowledge in the development of autonomous agents (robots) able to engage in joint action either with other robots or with humans.
This is harder to analyse than processes involving single individuals operating on their own, and may involve different areas of the brain. “We would like to find out which areas of the brain are involved in the synchronization of actions, and in making predictions about the timing of others' actions,” said Sebanz.
Sebanz plans to study humans while they are cooperating, and identify the associated underlying neurological changes through imaging techniques. She notes that there is as yet little knowledge of how behaviour in social contexts is related to underlying neurological processes. “We know quite little about the cognitive and brain processes that allow us to coordinate our actions with others — be it playing a duet, moving furniture together, or navigating in heavy traffic,” said Sebanz. “With this project, I expect to identify behavioural and brain mechanisms that allow people to work together in different situations.”
This work will build on current knowledge of social behaviour derived from linguistic and other studies. “So far, people have studied how we come to have common ground and shared understanding through language and through taking others' perspective,” said Sebanz. “My research will address how looking at things at the same time, knowing what others' tasks are, and coordinating actions in time, contribute further to the emergence of common ground and support successful joint action.”
Such knowledge will have not just academic value, but will make a huge contribution across a range of disciplines, including therapies for conditions involving loss of social functions or the adaptation of individuala to radical changes in their social environment.
 Dr. Sebanz is an assistant professor at Rutgers University. She completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science (MPI CBS), Department of Psychology. (formerly the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research). She went on to to carry out postdoctoral research at both Max Planck and Rutgers University.
Sebanz has worked for several years on how people coordinate their actions to reach common goals, including the organization of symposia on this topic. Her work appears in journals of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. She was an editor for “Disorders of Volition” and a research fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Bielefeld University.
Agency in the face of error. Knoblich G, Sebanz N. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Jun;9(6):259-61. PMID: 15925800.
Beyond simulation? Neural mechanisms for predicting the actions of others. Sebanz N, Frith C. Nat Neurosci. 2004 Jan;7(1):5-6. PMID: 14699409.
Disorders of Volition. Edited by Natalie Sebanz and Wolfgang Prinz. A Bradford Book. The MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hardcover: 504 pages. MIT Press (2006).
Joint action: bodies and minds moving together. Sebanz N, Bekkering H, Knoblich G. Trends Cogn Sci. 2006 Feb;10(2):70-6. Epub 2006 Jan 10. PMID: 16406326.
Representing others' actions: just like one's own? Sebanz N, Knoblich G, Prinz W. Cognition. 2003 Jul;88(3):B11-21. PMID: 12804818.
Simulation, mirroring, and a different argument from error. Goldman AI, Sebanz N. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Jul;9(7):320; author reply 321. PMID: 15953757.
Twin peaks: an ERP study of action planning and control in co-acting individuals. Sebanz N, Knoblich G, Prinz W, Wascher E. J Cogn Neurosci. 2006 May;18(5):859-70. PMID: 16768383 [PubMed.
Who's calling the shots? Intentional content and feelings of control. Sebanz N, Lackner U. Conscious Cogn. 2006 Oct 11. PMID: 17045811.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 31 August 2007 19:53 |
“Specifically, I have shown that people take into account what others are doing even when this is not required and actually interferes with their own performance of a task,” said Sebanz. “I have also shown that people with autism who have difficulties understanding what others think, feel, or believe, also have this strong tendency to take into account what others are doing.” 
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