Jonas Kaplan is a cognitive neuroscientist at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute. His research focuses on issues of social relationships, empathy, self, action perception and creativity. He uses functional neuroimaging to examine the neural mechanisms that underlie our experience of resonating with other people and being aware of our selves. One area of current study involves understanding how the brain modulates our empathic reactions to people in our own or different social groups. Dr. Kaplan also has an interest in emerging functional neuroimaging data analysis techniques that may allow new kinds of information to be extracted from brain imaging studies.

Favorite Film:

I would say that my favorite recent movie is Inception, because it reflects a deep truth about how the reality we live in is really a construction of the brain.