lecture 30 Flashcards
What is an absolute requirement of social behaviour?
- that we can tell people from one another
- activation of the inferior temporal gyrus and facial recognition
- recognition of individuals and we keep information about those individuals in our memory e.g. what they’ve done in the past, behaviour, predicting future behaviour
- necessary to behave in a sophisticated social context
What guidessocial behaviour?
- seems to be how we feel about things
- e.g. activation of amygdala during judgements of trustworthiness
With what is the prefrontal cortex synonymous?
- our mind
- we seem to live in the prefrontal cortex in terms of what we spend our conscious lives thinking about
Are the criteria of social cognition set?
- no
- somewhat arbitrary set of criteria
- as well as innate dispositions to our interactions with others, the rules or concepts that shape our social expectations, and form the norms of social behaviour, are a continuously evolving cultural inheritance
- the norms of behaviour are very plastic e.g. acceptance of nudity or gay marriage
What maintains social norms?
- powerful forces
- a particularly important aspect of our social competence is the development of the so-called “self conscious” emotions
- these emotions are experienced when an individual is able to internalise social constructs and evaluate their performance in relation to them
What are features of shame?
- usually keep mouth closed - don’t want to speak
- drop their head
- body collapses
What is a skill that underlies adult behaviour?
- hiding telling body language
- e.g. shame
- disguise manifestations in body language
How could you attempt to determine what controls social behaviour?
- “non-cognitive” emotions
- simple self referential emotional responses
- complex self referential emotional responses
Are there fundamental emotions?
- probably but how many ?
- surprise, interest, joy, anger, sadness, fear, digust
- some present almost at birth, some about 6 months
What do we see at end of second year of life?
- self recognition
- consciousness as in self-referential behaviour
- embarrassment (nonevaluative), envy, empathy
What do we see at three years?
- complex self referantial emotional responses
- embarrassment (evaluative), pride, shame, guilt
- acquisition and retention of standards and rules
- i.e. comparing performance to what is expected so you must be comparing to a model in your head
Do animals understand signs of social behaviour?
- yes
- manipulation of cognitive dispositions
- e.g. polar bear and dog
- monkeys
How do we detect lies?
- the abilities to “lie” and to detect lies are crucial to human interaction
- e.g different control pathways for forced or natural smiles
Volitional movement
- descending “pyramidal” and “extrapyramidal” projections from motor cortex and brain stem
//–> voluntary facial paresis
–> “pyramidal smile”
–> motor neuron pools in facial nucleus
–> activation of facial muscles
Neural systems for emotion
- descending “extrapyramidal” projections from parts of the ventral forebrain and hypothalamus
//–> emotional facial paresis
–> duchenne smile
–> motor neuron pools in facial nucleus
–> activation of facial muscles
How do we know about the prefrontal cortex?
- a great deal of information on the function of the prefrontal lobes in humans derives from the fact that head injuries from frontal impacts characteristically damage the prefrontal cortex
- gage - railway worker
- concious very soon after accident
- medical help
- memory, speech, comprehension, movement fine
- everything seem reasonably intact
- mostly a midline injury
- after accident: “considered change in his mind so marked that they could not give him his place again”
- equilibrium/balance between intellectual and animal tendencies seemed to be destroyed
- fundamental change
- undoubtedly exaggerated
- became more like a young child
- tenacious, stubborn, emotionally labile, don’t like being told what to do
- at the height of enthusiasm, psychiatric neurosurgery was recommended for curing or ameliorating schizophrenia, depression, homosexuality, childhood behaviour disorders, criminal behaviour and uncontrolled violence
- it is estimated that over 50,000 procedures were performed int he US alone between 1936 and the mid-1950s (chlorpromazine was developed in 1954) and much of the controversy surrounding psychiatric neurosurgery may relate to its overzealous and sometimes indiscriminate application during this period
Where is the drive of language?
- in our mind
- even if ability is intact no prefrontal connections lessen our desire to communicate
