Most of social cognition theories describe the"what"and"why"dimensions of action understanding.Stern coined the term"vitality forms"to remind us that there is a"how"dimension in action understanding that has been neglected.The brain imaging experi-ments confirmed the dorso-central insula involved in the processing of vitality forms through mirror mech-anism,and vitality forms can be communicated through visual and audio modalities.Autism is defec-tive in both the expressing and understanding of vi-tality forms which demonstrate its necessity in social interaction.Thus,the vitality forms support the em-bodied simulation and deepen our understanding of fast and direct social cognition.In the future,experi-mental studies should go beyond the current variable of gentle/rude behavior and build a spectrum of vital-ity forms,and the relationship among vitality forms,emotion and affect should be closely examined.And all these works should be done in the framework of second person neuroscience.
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