Social Cognitive Neuroscience Flashcards
What network is active when you are at resting state via?
fmri shows activity in the default mode network
What system is the dmn strongly inversely correlated with?
-the dmn is strongly inversely correlated with the endogenous attention system IPS/FEF as well as supplementary motor areas involved in task performance
The medial frontal cortex is involved in many loosely related processes. What three regions of the MFC did amodio and frith identify?
orbital frontal cortex - involved in monitoring the likelihood of reward or predicted value/utility if choices in decision making tasks
posterior medial frontal cortex - is involved in action monitoring more generally; involved in how difficult a task is
anterior medial frontal cortex - self-knowledge, person perception and mentalizing
How do we operationalize self-knowledge?
-ochsner et al showed people positive negative and neutral images
-in self blocks participants reported how the images made them feel
-in other blocks they were asked to report how the central figure in the picture felt
-in control conditions participants judged whether the photo was taken indoors or out
RESULTS
-reporting on one’s own responses elcited strong activity on the anterior medial frontal cortex
What do other self knowledge tasks that the anterior medial frontal cortex is involved in?
deciding whether trait words apply to themsleves
deciding whether photographs of buildings were photos they had taken aka autobiographical memory (Other lateral area involved in recognizing a picture as your own in addition to this area )
What was seen in the mitchell et al study where they asked people whether lists of words apply to mental states of people or were part of a a person?
answering questionsabout mental ststaes elicited greater actviity in the anterior medial pfc
-also get activity in other social cognition areas - precuneus, right posterior superior temporal cortex and angular gyrus (tpj)
What are other tasks related to person perception?
obsreving social interactions
-forming impressions of people
What did mitchell et al also find strong activity in the what region when people reasoned about the mental states of dogs?
anterior mPFC
-this indicates that processes associated with person perception are eother more general or that we reaosn about animla mental states by reference to what we know about people
What is mentalizing or theory of mind?
-ascribing goals and attentional states to other beings
What was seen in the theory of mind for geometric shapes?
compared to control conditions in which:
1) the shapes appeared to be moving on their own but did not interact with one another
2) the shapes moved randomly
-a network including anterior MFC and right TPJ were was activated during scenes in which the shapes could plausibly be described as cooperating or competing
-a program which would reflect back to you what you said known as eliza - looked at control conditions at which the shapes are moving on their own but they do not interact with on another and for both of these controls gets a network of tpj and this study puts the tpj on the map about mentalizing
In the same study regarding the theory of mind and geometric shapes what did they see in participants with autism?
reduced activity throughout the set of reas linked with social cognitions like the anterior mfc and right tpj
-no difference between autistic participants anf neurotypical contrlos are observed in v1
What do other theory of mind tasks involve?
reasoning about abstract states
-for example understanding false beliefs requires knowing that other agents can have imperfect knowledge of the world
-cihildren under age 5 believe that sally will under the marble for her white box
-there is a lot of controversy about whether this is a problem of ToM or a problem inhibiting the fact that they know the marble is in the white box
-these tasks generally engage a network including anterior mfc and especially right tpj regions
The right tpj is involved in what network?
ventral attentional network
-in particular:
-it responds to unexpected behaviorally relevant stimuli
-it is described as a circuit breaker that interrupts the dorsal attentional network when something unexpected happens
-the right tpj is part of the ventral attentional network and it responds to unexpected behaviorally relevant stimuli and is the circuit breaker for the dorsal attentional network of endogenous attention when something unexpected happens so you can get exogenous attention
What are the three possibiltiies regarding the theory of mind and attention and the tpj?
- theory of mind tasks somehow involve shifting of attention than control tasks
- the tpj is a complicated place where all sorts of different things are processed
- the term tpj is too vague there are actually different regions involved in the ToM and reorienting
What did Kubit and Jack find when they conducted a meta analysis to compare three candidate functions of the TPJ?
three candidate functions
theory of mind
reorienting
target detection
-alot of overlap between theory of mind and reorientation
-the peak activation across many studies is more posterior for ToM
-there is connectivity between within the middle and inferior frontal cortex for reorienting
=there is connectivity ith the precuneus and medial frontal cortex in the theory of mind
