12. The Psychobiology of "mind reading" Flashcards
What is the social brain/Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis?
Dunbar (1998) – human intelligence evolved primarily as a means of surviving in complex social groups
What behaviours are demonstrated according to the social brain/Machiavellian?
Reciprocal altruism, deception, coalition formation
What do group dynamics relate to according to the social brain/Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis?
They relate to the theory of mind – the ability to understand the thoughts/emotions/intentions of others
What did Dunbar suggest about social groups?
Dunbar suggests that as social group size increases, the complexity of managing social/political relationships increase
- Chimps live in groups of ~50
- Humans (traditionally) live in groups of ~150 (Dunbar’s number)
- The social brain hypothesis: when hominids started living in large groups, selection favoured greater intelligence
What is the social intelligence hypothesis?
In mammals there appears to be a correlation between brain size and social group size. In anthropoid primates, mean social group size correlates with relative neocortex volume
What is an alternative suggestion to the socialness of the brain according to Miller (2000)?
SUMMARY: intelligence is a way of showing-off, and making people think you are sexy
Miller (2000) argues that human intelligence is unnecessarily sophisticated for the needs of hunter-gatherers to survive.
He argues that the manifestations of intelligence such as language, music and art are of no utilitarian vale to the survival or ancient hominids
Rather intelligence may have been a fitness indicator
What do our faces convey?
They convey messages about our inner states
What do monkeys say about how we look?
Chimpamzees, gorillas and bonobos – were more likely to follow the experimenter’s gaze when he moved only his head. In contrast, the 40 human infants looked up more often when the experimenter moved only his eyes: Tomasello, 2007
What are the effects of being alone?
“The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking”: House, 2001
What does living alone increase?
Living alone increases the risk of depression and suicide.
Lonely individuals report higher levels of perceived stress
Loneliness raises levels of circulating stress hormones and levels of blood pressure
What is the relation between human behaviour and being “social” creatures?
There are very man aspects of human behaviour that seem to indicate that we are, at a fundamental level “social” creatures
The scientific examination of the mind, brain and cognition should take this into account
What are the brain systems underlying social perception?
Understanding actions
Understanding faces
Understanding emotions
Understanding intentions
What is involve in the Brother’s Bold program?
Gaze detection Metalizing Social judgement Affect recognition Facial perception
How do we understand the actions of others?
- We gain most of our information about the world through visual perception
- Motion is important for understanding action
Biological motion
Johansson (1973) – “point light” animation sequence
Motion helps define form?
When can biological motion be perceived and what can be perceived?
Biological motion can be perceived even when embedded in masks of dots (Perrett et al., 1990)
Gender of the walker can be perceived (Cutting, 1977)
Facial expressions of emotion can be recognised from point-light display (Bassili, 1978)
Social (threatening, greeting etc.) and instrumental actions (lifting, ball bouncing) can also be recognised (Dittrich, 1993)
Identifying basic emotion from dance (Dittrich, 1996) 83% correct in normal viewing – 63% correct to point-light displays
When is the posterior superior temporal sulcus activated?
Posterior STS is activated during the perception of point-light displays (Grossman et al., 2000)
Also activated to more complex social stimuli involving implied/actual motion (Puce et al., 2003)
What does Transcranial Magnetic stimulation distrupt?
TMS to this area disrupts the perception of point-ight displays (Grossman et al., 2005)
How were mirror neurons discovered?
Accidentally in the early 1990s by researchers working on single cell recordings in the macaque motor cortex
When do mirror neurons fire?
Mirror neurons fire whilst a monkey performs an action, and whilst it observes the experimenter performing the same action
What did Di Pellegrino et al., 1992 discover about Area F5 and the central premotor cortex?
Out of 184 F5 neurons sampled, almost all were activated during movement
12 of these neurons (6%) responded to the same action when executed as when observed (strictly congruent mirror neuron)
17 more (9%) responded to logically related or visually similar actions, fire as long as goals and intentions match (broadly congruent)
How did Umilta (2001) indicate that mirror systems seem to encode intentions?
In B and D visual input is identical. Differences in spiking must be due to knowing that the object is or is not there.
Therefore concluded that such mirror neurons discriminate between reach and reach to graspt
And therefore encode intentions
How were mirror neurons observed in humans?
Participants observed or imitated the lifting of the index or the middle finger (top).
In visual control conditions they observed a cross appearing on the index or middle finger of a static hand (middle), or appearing on the left or right side of a grey rectangle (bottom).
In motor control conditions, participants lifted the index or middle finger in response to the appearance of the cross.
The two areas showing the predicted pattern of higher activity for the control motor task compared with action observation, and highest activity during imitation, were located in the inferior frontal cortex (Brodmann’s area 44; BA44) and in the rostral part of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC)33.
What did the Superior Temporal sulcus provide the mirror neuron system?
The superior temporal sulcus (STS) provide the MNS with high level of visual description of the observed actions of meaningful motion by an animate agent
Inferior Parietal Lobule
Concerned with motor modelling of observed behaviour
Inferior Frontal Gyrus
Concerned with intentionality
Are faces a “special” class of object?
Several lines of evidence converge to suggest that faces are processed by neural mechanisms that differ from those used to process objects
What is the evidence suggesting that faces are processed by neural mechanisms?
- Behavioural evidence
- Developmental evidence
- Lesion studies
- Monkey neurophysiology
- High spatially resolution imaging techniques
- High temporal resolution imaging techniques
What is the facial inversion effect?
A variety of types of judgements about faces are more difficult when faces are presented upside down.
What do the facial inversion effects imply?
They imply orientation sensitive processes that are specific to faces as opposed to other classes of objects.
e.g. Thatcherised faces (Thompson 1980)
Prospagnosia
Face blindness
Monkey neurophysiology
Desimone 1992 – single cell recordings reveal cells with a preferentially increased firing rate for faces in the Superior Temporal Sulcus
Intra-cranial EEG
fMRI – Reveals patches of cortex in the fusiform gyrus that show increased BOLD response to faces
Intra-cranial EEG
Depth implanted electrodes in patients with intractable epilepsy reveal increased activity to faces in areas of extrastriate cortex
Haxby’s (2000) model of the face processing system
Inferior occipital gyri → superior temporal sulcus → Lateral fusiform gyrus
(Core system: visual analysis)
(goes in a circle)
Superior temporal sulcus – leads to: - intraparietal sulcus - auditory cortex - amygdala, insula, limbic system (all in the extended system – further processing with other neural systems)
Lateral fusiform – leads to: anterior temporal (in the extended system)
Role of the Inferior occipital gyri in the face processing system
Early perception of facial features
Role of the Superior temporal sulcus in the face processing system
Recognises changeable aspects of faces – perception of eye gazes, expression and lip movement
Role of the Lateral fusiform gyrus in the face processing system
Recognises invariant aspects of faces – perception of unique identity
Role of the intraparietal sulcus in the face processing system
Sptially directed attention
Role of the auditory cortex in the face processing system
Prelexical speech perceptionSptially directed attention
Role of the amygdala, insula, limbic system in the face processing system
Recognising emotion
Role of the anterior temporal in the face processing system
Personal identity, name and biographical information
What is the evolutionary perspective of emotion?
Charles Darwin:
- emotions are functional (i.e. fight or flight activation) and confer survival advantage
- facial signals are universal
- facial signals of emotion are not arbitrary
What does it mean when emotions are categorical?
They have evolved in response to distinct evolutionary pressures and fulfil different functions
What did Aldolphs (1994) do with fear and the amygdala?
Conducted amygdala lesions to selectively impair fear recognition
What did Cader, Lawrence & Young (2001) do in relation to fear and the amygdala?
Imaging studies looking at fear conditioning (red dots) and viewing facial expressions of fear (green dots) both activate amygdala
What did the studies of fear and the amygdala suggest?
That the amygdala is involved in both the experience and the recognition of fear
What did Grey et al. (1997) discover in relation to disgust and the insula?
Impaired recognition of facial expressions of disgust in pre-symptomatic Huntington’s gene carriers
What did Calder, Lawrence & Yound (2001) find in relation to disgust and the insula in their review of imaging?
Right basal ganglia (red dots) and bilateral insulae (blue dots) are activated by disgusted faces
What are the reactions to disgusting odours?
Overlapping region of anterior insula is activated whilst smelling disgusting odorants and whilst viewing the facially signalled disgust of other whiles smelling odorants
What does empathy the answer to?
How can we tell what another person is thinking and feeling?
What leads one person to respond with sensitivity and care to the suffering of another?
What purposes does experiencing empathy fulfil?
- providing information
2. stimulating caring behaviour
What are the concepts of empathy according to Hein & singer (2008)?
Cognitive
Sympathy/empathetic concerns/compassion
Emotional contagion
Affective empathy
Cognitive empathy
Understanding the beliefs and motivations of others
“Mentalising”, “perspective taking”, “mind-reading”, “theory of mind”
Sympathy/empathetic concern/compassion
Feeling for as opposed to feeling with
Emotional contagion
Person incorporates that affective state of another without explicit awareness that it is someone-else’s emotion
Affective empathy
“Feeling with”
Empathy for pain
Is empathy related to altruism?
According to Singer (2006) Empathy is not necessarily related to pro-social behaviour, whereas sympathy/compassion is more likely to lead to altruism/pro-social behaviour
What is the hierarchical view of the concepts of empathy?
Emotional contagion – Necessary precursor for development of empathy?
→
Empathy – sharing of affective experiences – necessary precursor for compassion?
→
Compassion/sympathy – feeling motivated to act by the affective experience of others
What was involved in Singer et al.’s (2004) study in empathy and pain?
“Empathy for pain involves the affective but not sensory components of pain”
Participants receive painful stimuli themselves and observe their partner experiencing the same pain.
What is the suggestion of empathy?
The suggestion is that we understand other people’s inner emotional states by activating the same brain system that are involved in us experiencing those states.
What is the theory of mind according to “Folk Psychology”?
The idea that we are all naïve scientist and that we have theories that allow us to explain the actions of others
Mind-reading (Baron-Cohen)
What does the theory of mind relate to?
Relates to our ability to understand the behaviours of others through the attribution of mental states
What does the theory of the mind recognise?
Recognises that other peoples actions are goal-directed – i.e. people are “intentional” agents (Dennett)
Mental states
Beliefs, desires, indentions etc
What is the optimal way to test for the presence of the theory of mind?
Since the theory of mind relates to mental states, the optimal way to test for its presence is through the prediction of another person’s behaviour when this persons belief about reality is erroneous: i.e. testing of false-beliefs (Dennett, 1978)
Why is testing of true-belief no good?
As it would be impossible to decide unequivocally whether the other person behaves in accordance with reality or in accordance with his or her own belief
Who is an agent that acted in accordance with reality?
One without having any beliefs about reality – i.e. a robot who is programmed to go to the fridge and get a beer without holding any belief
What are false belief tasks in testing the theory of mind?
The Sally-Anne Task Baron-Cohen
Leslie & Frith, 1985 Belief Question: Where will Sally look for the ball?
Memory Question: Where was the ball in the beginning?
Reality Question: Where is the ball really? 4-5 year olds get the belief question right. Younger kids don’t. Kids with Autism don’t.
What is the theory-theory of mind?
Can be thought of as a series of statements or axioms about the world.
- initial information about the target other
- Apply the principles of the theory of mind
- Predict the actions of the target other
What are the general theory of mind principles?
People seek things they desire
People act according to their beliefs, not objective reality
People are unhappy when their desires are not fulfilled
What do simulation theories suggest?
They suggest that the theory of mind raises a bit of a problem – i.e. the need for an exhaustive set of theories
“Simulationists note that biology ensures that our own minds will have processes for the fixation of beliefs, the formation of desires and other processes involving mental states that are essentially similar in their causal properties to the same processes in the minds of others. This being the case, at least some of the work involved in thinking about another mind could be achieved by using one’s own mind as a model.” - Apperly 2008
What supports the simulation theory?
When we anticipate someone else’s judgement about the grammaticality of a sentence we use our own (non-theoretical) grammatical intuitions (Harris, 1989)
What supports the theory-theory?
We make system errors when predicting other people’s judgements (Saxe, 2005) e.g. Kruger & Gilovich (1999) married couples – predicted spouse would be self-serving
What rare the neural systems underlying empathy?
ACC
Anterior insula
SII
What rare the neural systems underlying the theory of mind operations?
TPJ
STS
Tempral pole
Medial frontal cortex
