Lecture 7 - Social and Emotional Brain 2

Question 1

Is face processing innate? - Fantz (1961) looking chamber study

Answer 1

Infants prefer to look at real faces
Looked less at scrambled up faces and ignored the control (no face)
However, may already have a preference

Question 2

Is face processing innate? - Johnson et al. (1991) new born study

Answer 2

Newborns (one hour old) looked at face like patterns more
However, newborns are sensitive to the structure of human faces - faces are the first thing they see after birth

Question 3

Is face processing innate? - Reid et al. (2017) foetus study

Answer 3

Shown face-like stimuli
- 34 weeks gestation, more likely to engage with up-right face-like stimuli
Shows innateness

Question 4

What is the role of experience in face processing?

Answer 4

• 4-6 month olds show visual brain areas similar to adult brains (fusiform face area)
• This refines through development, EXPERIENCE AND MATURATION

Question 5

What brain area is involved in facial expression recognition? - Di Lorenzo et al. (2019) infant study

Answer 5

fNIRs - 5 months old infants
Covered areas involve in adult facial expression processing
- Right occipital region (where primary visual cortex is) selectively responded to facial expressions
- Shows the network is activated at 5 months but no difference between happy and fearful faces
- Sensitivity is immature

Question 6

What did the visual cliff experiment find about infant facial expression recognition? - Source et al. (1985)

Answer 6

• 12 month old infants
• When mother expressed joy and interest the child would cross
• When mother expressed fear or anger the child would not cross
• Shows that by 12 months old, infants are able to process facial expressions and use them for decision making

Question 7

What is the role of eye gaze direction?

Answer 7

• Social cue understanding
• Emotions
• Dyadic communication
• Orients attention
• Intention

Question 8

Is eye gaze direction innate? - Baron-Cohen

Answer 8

Proposes ‘eye gaze detector’ = innate
Linked to social competence and is not learnt

Question 9

What brain area is involved in eye gaze direction?

Answer 9

Superior temporal sulcus

Question 10

What do lesions in the superior temporal sulcus impair? - Campbell et al. (1990)

Answer 10

Eye gaze direction - ability to detect and make judgements about eye gaze

Question 11

What brain area is involved in face identity recognition?

Answer 11

Fusiform Face Area

Question 12

What did Ferroni et al. (2002) find about newborns and eye gaze?

Answer 12

First 5 days of life - prefer faces that engage in mutual eye gaze

Question 13

How does eye gaze direction differ with ASD? - Barron-Cohen et al. (1995)

Answer 13

• Autistic people have an intact perception of eye gaze
• Difficulty using eye gaze to PREDICT behaviour
• Can’t infer desires of others

Question 14

How does brain activity differ for eye gaze and ASD?

Answer 14

• Superior temporal sulcus involved in eye gaze for typically developing and autistic people
• Autistic people showed no difference in STS activity between congruent and incongruent eye gaze
• Congruent = goal directed
• Incongruent = non-goal directed

Question 15

What is empathy?

Answer 15

Emotional understanding of others feelings, ability to infer emotional experiences of others

Question 16

What is the Theory of Mind?

Answer 16

Cognitive empathy
Mentalising - ability to infer mental states and intentions of others

Question 17

Neural basis of empathy and ToM - what is the role of the temporal poles?

Answer 17

• Activated in language and semantic memory
• Generate schemas important for social and emotional context

Question 18

Neural basis of empathy and ToM - what is the role of the medial prefrontal cortex?

Answer 18

• Activated by thinking about others and their minds (mentalising)
• Lesions show difficulty in understanding irony and metaphors - Autistic people have difficulties with this (where intentions are ambiguous)

Question 19

Neural basis of empathy and ToM - what is the role of the temporoparietal junction?

Answer 19

• Activated by mentalising, perception of motor, eye gaze, moral judgment and mouth movement
• Anterior region = inferring mental states from facial expressions
• Posterior region = verbal false belief tasks (lesions = fail ToM tasks)