The Congress and Journal Special Issue will be centered along five broad questions as put here together with some suggestions of topics:

• What is empathy, how can we define it?

history of the concept empathy and predecessors, bedside-manners…; empathy for health in literature; empathy versus placebo; neuroimaging of empathy…

• What is already known about its practice?

• How important is it in healthcare?

• Lack of empathy

• How can we improve it?

• Where do we (probably) evolve towards?

This congress is organized by AURELIS IVZW (NPO) and Dr. Jean-Luc Mommaerts, MD, MSc (Cogn.Sci, A.I.), PhD (Med.Sci.), in cooperation with VUB (Brussels)