Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of this book is to identify and analyse the main internal
and external spaces that enabled and encouraged interaction
among individuals and groups in the ancient city of Rome. Such spaces
include places of worship, places of entertainment, bathhouses and
other places for personal care and recreation, guildhalls and places of
economic and political exchange. The main objective of each chapter
of the volume is to establish the topographical framework of spaces
and buildings, and the relations between spaces (and their furnishings)

Can social gaze behavior reveal the leader during real-world group interactions? To answer this question, we developed a novel tripartite approach combining (1) computer vision methods for remote gaze estimation, (2) a detailed taxonomy to encode the implicit semantics of multi-party gaze features, and (3) machine learning methods to establish dependencies between leadership and visual behaviors. We found that social gaze behavior distinctively identified group leaders.

In every-day life there many social phenomena based on un-conditionality, disinterestedness, over abound. Such phenomena remain outside the field of explanation of approaches such as rational choice theory or neo-utilitarianism, being described as paradoxes of social action. Drawing from critical theories, we propose to (re)introduce the sociological concept of agape-love as a theoretical frame for those social mechanisms that elude reification, quantifiability, instrumental thinking. We present the case of “suspended goods” and read it with the look of agape.

The ability to experience aesthetics plays a fundamental role in human social interactions, as well as the capacity to feel empathy. Some studies have shown that beauty perception shares part of the neural network underlying emotional and empathic abilities, which are also known to affect sleep quality and duration. In this study, we evaluated for the first time the effects of sleep on the relation between aesthetic perception and empathic abilities in healthy subjects using a mediation analysis approach. One-hundred and twenty-six subjects participated in this study.

Recent studies have focused on the role of the cerebellum in the social domain, including in Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM, or the "mentalizing" process, is the ability to attribute mental states, such as emotion, intentions and beliefs, to others to explain and predict their behavior. It is a fundamental aspect of social cognition and crucial for social interactions, together with more automatic mechanisms, such as emotion contagion. Social cognition requires complex interactions between limbic, associative areas and subcortical structures, including the cerebellum.

Background and Objectives: Major depression disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are characterized by the use of perseverative cognition (PC) as a dysfunctional coping strategy. We sought to investigate the dysfunctional physiological and psychological consequences of PC and how the valence of social interactions moderates such consequences in these psychopathological conditions.
Design/Methods: The study combined 24-hour heart rate variability (HRV) and ecological momentary assessments in 48 individuals with MDD, SAD, and sex-matched controls.

Representing others’ intentions is central to primate social life. We explored the role of dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) in discriminating between self and others’ behavior while two male rhesus monkeys performed a non-match-to-goal task in a monkey-human paradigm. During each trial, two of four potential targets were randomly presented on the right and left parts of a screen, and the monkey or the human was required to choose the one that did not match the previously chosen target. Each agent had to monitor the other's action in order to select the correct target in that agent's own turn.

The aim of this book is to identify and analyse the main internal and external spaces that enabled and encouraged interaction among individuals and groups in the ancient city of Rome. Such spaces include places of worship, places of entertainment, bathhouses and other places for personal care and recreation, guildhalls and places of economic and political exchange. The main objective of each chapter of the volume is to establish the topographical framework of spaces and buildings, and the relations between spaces (and their furnishings) and the individuals or groups who used them.