About the Author

Martin Brune, Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Preventive Medicine Division of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, Wulf Schiefenhovel, Professor of Medical Psychology and Ethnomedicine, Max-Planck-Institute for Ornithology, Germany

Born in Dortmund, Germany, in 1962. Martin Brune graduated in medicine at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Munster in 1988. He completed his neurology training in 1993, and his psychiatry training in 1995. His subsequent training included a Visiting Research Scientist fellowship at the Centre for the Mind, a joint venture of the Australian National University and University of Sydney. He is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Head of the Division of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and Psychiatric Preventive Medicine at the LWL University-Hospital, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

Martin Brune's research projects include social cognition in psychiatric disorders, the association of social cognition with social functioning and nonverbal behaviour, game-theoretical scenarios, the effect of oxytocin on social perception and cognition in psychiatric disorders and social interaction in therapeutic settings.

Born in 1943 in Siegen, Germany. Wulf Schiefenhovel graduated in medicine at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen in 1970. In 1965 beginning of ongoing fieldwork in ethnomedicine, anthropology and human ethology in Mainland and Island New Guinea. WS was president of the German Society for Anthropology, the International Society for Human Ethology and fellow of several institutes of advanced study. He teaches human ethology at Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck.

Wulf Schiefenhovel's cross-cultural research projects (mostly centered on Melanesia) include: human reproduction and birth, early infancy, non-verbal behaviour, aggression and aggression control, population genetics and history of Papuan and Austronesian dispersal, ethnomedical concepts and practices, socio-cultural correlates of handedness, language and cognition, evolutionary bases of human religious inclinations, management of acculturation, anthropology of food, evolutionary medicine, ethnoarchaeology, and ethnographic film.