Neuroscience: Your pain is my pain - what makes us feel empathy?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology and Psychology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Valeria Gazzola and Professor Christian Keysers, of The Social Brain Lab based in the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, who employ the latest techniques in neuroscience to uncover how the process of empathy plays out in the brain.
• This resource also contains an interview with Valeria and Christian. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. Valeria and Christian will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the Social Brain Lab’s research, as well as links to videos about the lab.
• The animation reiterates the key points in the article and is accompanied by the script.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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