Foreword

This Annals volume collects most of the papers presented and discussed at the first Barcelona Social Brain Conference, entitled Values and Empathy across Social Barriers: A Neurocognitive Approach to Fairness, which took place on November 21−22, 2008. The conference was organized under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), the European Science Foundation, and the Catalan Research Foundation, as well as the Social Brain Chair (Autonomous University of Barcelona). The idea for the conference originally came about four years earlier, at the closing of an extremely largescale set of multidisciplinary cultural debates, fostered by Dr. Joan Clos, who was then the mayor of Barcelona (and who is currently serving the Spanish ambassador in Turkey). It was Dr. Clos who suggested and lobbied for the creation of the Social Brain Chair, an institution devoted to disseminating current advances in the social neurosciences through education and research connected to “ruling human communities according to high standards in values and morality.” In June 2006, the City of Barcelona and Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) convened to create the Chair, which was adscribed to UAB’s Department of Psychiatry. It has been gratifying to see the impressive media impact that the Social Brain Chair has had in promoting education on social-neuroscience issues in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, as well as the whole of Spain (see www.elcervellsocial.net). The Chair’s initiatives include high-school contests concerning primatology, the production of a video documentary (Bajo la Piel del Conflicto, 2004), and academic publications such as Social Brain Matters: Stances on the Neurobiology of Social Cognition (O. Vilarroya and F. Forn-Argimón (Eds), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). Around this time, the Chair also contacted NYAS President Ellis Rubinstein, with a proposal to hold a series of conferences on social-brain issues, either in Barcelona or in New York City. The New York Academy of Sciences welcomed the initiative with enthusiasm. The present volume is a testament to two windy and hectic days in November 2008, on one of the steep slopes of Tibidabo mountain, where the Barcelona Museum of Science-“Cosmocaixa” is located. The conference venue came alive with a truly multidisciplinary atmosphere, where neuroscientists, economists, geneticists, anthropologists, and political scientists from around the world engaged in a highly productive encounter concerning the social neurobiology of fairness.