Research

The research questions are diverse. Our inquiry includes measuring how aurality changes through time and space. Debates encompass diverging opinions about women's spaces in their convents, arguments about the causes and effects of affective devotion and gendered piety during the Middle Ages (Caroline Walker Bynum, Barbara Newman, Karma Lochrie), controversies about emotions and the formation of emotional communities (Barbara Rosenwein), hypotheses on synesthesia (Oliver Sacks), new claims about the anatomy, physiology, and eco-sociology of mirror neurons (Marco Iacoboni), new ideas about the roles of emotion in cognition and decision-making (Antonio Damasio), and assertions on brain-brain coupling as a mechanism for making and sharing social worlds (Uri Hasson) − to mention just a few possibilities for investigation.