Emotional communication in humans and great apes

Understanding other people’s emotional states is critical to successful social interaction. Emotions are expressed through the face and voice, but also the body. I will discuss what is currently known about how different emotional states are characterised by specific bodily movements and how the human brain processes these visual cues to others' emotions. 

Ever since Darwin’s famous work “The expression of the emotions in man and animals”, there has been wide interest in understanding how humans and animals both express and experience their emotions. In this talk, I will explore the emotional communication of our closest living relatives, the great apes, and discuss what this can tell us about the evolution of emotion expressions and empathy.