Secretariat, Alumni Association, IDAC
Date	Tuesday, August the 2nd, 2016 (17:00 – onward)
Room	1st Floor IDAC Center for Clinical Aging Research
Title	Taking autistic perspective: Empathy and moral judgments in autism spectrum disorders
Speaker	Hidetsugu Komeda
Affiliation	The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University
Organizer	Yasuyuki Taki (Department of Nuclear Medicine and Radiology) Contact: Mitsunari Abe (Department of Nuclear Medicine and Radiology, Ext. 8559)
Abstract	Autism spectrum disorders are neurodevelopmental disorders, diagnosed as social communication difficulties and stereotypical behaviors or insistence on the sameness (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). “Autism” originates from the Greek word “autós” (which means “self”), and individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are thought to represent atypical self-awareness and to experience difficulties understanding other minds based on altered self-awareness. Firstly, I will describe our neuroimaging study on perspective taking, which is the ability to perceive another person’s perspective. Secondly, I will introduce our neuroimaging study on empathic responses by individuals with ASD. Finally, I will present our recent behavioral studies on moral judgments in early adolescence with ASD. Based on those findings, I would like to discuss the importance on taking an “autistic” perspective.