Vers une neuropsychologie sociale. Intégrer l'empathie, l'effet caméléon et la contagion émotionnelle dans la recherche et la clinique neurologique

The present article makes the case for a social neuropsychology. A number of data from various fields are reviewed that show the intrinsic social nature of our brain processes. Humans, the "social animal", perceive their fellows and represent them in a very different way than they perceive and represent nonhuman objects and events. This simple insight, now backed up by solid behavioural and brain imaging results, is the heart of the so-called social neurosciences. The simulation theory, the chameleon effect and emotional contagion are instances of this burgeoning approach in the behavioural sciences, all of which seem to be underlain by a principle of primitive empathy, which in turn appears to be implemented by a large-scale self-other resonance mechanism. The so-called mirror-system is often presented as a good neurobiological candidate for these phenomena, whereby a single neuronal network operates when a specific action or emotion is self-generated or when that action or emotion is simply perceived in others. In other words, perception and action are linked right down at the neurobiological level, and this overlap may explain our ease in perceiving others as individuals just "like us". This occurs automatically, rapidly and mainly unconsciously, and may help to understand the many examples of motor, vocal, facial and behavioural mimicry in the human species that we review here. Such an all-encompassing tendency, which has been largely overlooked in the scientific literature until recently, cannot be discarded as mere peculiarities and has to be included in cognitive and neuroscientific accounts of human behaviour. Primitive empathy must carefully have been selected during hominid evolution and we propose some of its adaptive functions - including group affiliation, altruism and the rapid spreading of cultural symbols and artefacts - as well as its drawbacks, like chauvinism and conformism. Seeing the human brain as a specialised device for mutual social understanding can shed new light on many of its disorders seen in clinical practice. We review some classic neuro-behavioral syndromes, classifying them as empathic disorders, excesses of mimesis, lacks of mime-sis and pathological emotional contagion. In light of all these insights, we then argue against what we see as a deep shortcoming in current neuropsychological practice, namely the failure to account for the social and contextual nature of cognitive processes, and make the case for a much needed research programme on those aspects. In the end, a thorough knowledge of how we perceive others and how the social environment modulates our minds may be the right approach to account for the much discussed human ability for self-awareness, as many thinkers already had the insight in the past.