social neuroscience Flashcards
social cognition 3 components
- understanding others
- understanding self
- -> 3. social interactions
social cognition: understanding others
- emotion recognition
- theory of mind
- empathy
social cognition: understanding self
- self recognition
- self-other differentiation
- agency
Experiment: brain processes social stimuli differently
- noun could be a person or an object
- task: Does this adjective relate to this noun?
- -> same task but social aspect is different
- -> different brain regions activated
the social brain
- social tasks elicit distinct patterns of activation
- recruited areas differ from those used on nonsocial cognitive processes
1. Medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)
2. Temporoparietal junction (TPJ)
Default Mode Network and social cognition
- about self-differentiating tasks
- mostly when thinking about oneselves
- activation during rest and deactivation during cognitive tasks
(so rest is not really the best control condition)
relationship between brain region development and friendship
- structural change in brain during adolescence
- faster cortical thinning: more increase in friendship (better in e.g., perspective taking)
- higher cortical thickness: lower friendship quality
measuring social cognition: director task: director condition
- director gives you instructions on what to do (move objects in the book shelf) –> if he wants you to move something it means that he can see it: so what can the director see?
- critical trial: there is another object that fits his description but he cannot see it
- control trial: only one object fits the description
measuring social cognition: no-director condition
- there is no director –> task: only move objects that are visible from both sides
measuring social cognition: director task results
- most errors in critical director trials
- children make the most errors: 30% in director critical, 15% in non-director critical
- huge drop in errors from children to adolescence
- -> more cortical thinning in social brain (better social perspective taking)
what does the director task measure?
- social cognition
- inhibitive control (you need to inhibit your own perspective to focus on the directors)
impairment in social interactions BPD
- unstable and intense social relationships
- exhibit social problem-solving deficits
impairments in social interactions ASD
- limited interest in social interactions
- difficulty recognizing emotions and using these to guide social interactions
impairments in social interactions social phobia
- fear of judgment or embaressment leads to avoiding social situations
impairment in social interactions psychosis
- reduced understanding of (social) agency
neuroeconomics
a convergence of
1. economics
2. decision science
3. psychology
and 4. neuroscience
that seeks to build formative quantitative models of
1. mental representations and 2. neural processes
that underlie human motivation and choice behavior
economic exchange task
- well characterized paradigms to evaluate social interactions
- offer quantitative performance indicators to compare normative and pathological behavior and adaption to changing environments
ultimatum game
- player 1 gets a certain amount of money
- How would you like to divide it with player 2? (you cannot to cents)
- player 2: do you accept the offer?
- accept: you get what you’ve been offered
- reject: no one gets anything
ultimatum game: acceptance and rejection
- economists: maximize pay off by keeping 100% and always accepting offer
- typically offer around 50%: 100% acceptance rate
- higher chance of rejection the more unfair the offer (more rejection with humans than with computers)
- unfair offers lead to negative emotions (insula activation)
What do social exchanges require?
- recognizing and understanding behavioral norms
- detecting deviations from those norms
- possesing the capacity to select appropriate interactions based on those deviations
rejection of unfair offers in patients with anxiety disorders
- less rejection in patients with GAD, even more when untreated
- -> differences in perception of offer: they perceive the offer as less unfair and are less angry
fairness and antisocial behavior
- adolescent males with high levels of antisocial behavior vs controls
- 2 trial types: choice between fair and unfair alternative, or between two unfair alternatives
- -> effects of INTENTIONALITY
- juvenile delinquents: less differentiation between no alternative vs. fair alternative conditions compared to controls
- more rejection when there is an alternative, but difference is smaller in antisocial behavior group (so they don’t consider intentionality)
- less activation of mentalising regions (temporoparietal junction, TPJ) during no alternative condition in delinquent group
social learning: trust and cooperation
- one-shot games miss a central feature of social exchange: social learning
- tasks such as the trust game enable consequences of actions to be measured within interactions in which the results of one person’s choices depend not only on his own behavior but also on the choices of another person
- neuroimaging: never one-shot games! (you always need multiple trials to have enough data)
trust game
- player 1, investor: 1 euro: keep or share
- if share, amount tripled, trustee gets 3 euro
(would be good to invest, but will player 2 give back?) - player 2: will you give back?
–> how does this change over time/ over multiple trials?
trust game: what do you measure in the investor?
trust
trust game: what do you measure in the trustee
trustworthiness or reciprocity
trust in psychosis design
- sample: patients, relatives (subthreshold symptoms?), controls
- all played as investor
condition 1: no context game: know nothing
condition 2: context 2: they were told how the person has invested in the 1st round
condition 3: feedback game: direct feedback (interaction)
trust in psychosis results
- basic trust lower in patients and relatives
- patients less able to adapt their trust when told that player has been cooperative (reduced sensitivity to social context), relatives adapt
neural mechanisms of trust in psychosis
- patients show less activation in (social) reward learning region: caudate
- activation correlates negatively with paranoia scores - patients show less activation in mentalizing region (TPJ): don’t really consider why people make a decision
BPD disturbed interaction study
- big decrease in investment from early to late rounds: indicate a failure to maintain cooperation in the interactions between healthy investors and borderline trustees
- -> struggle with coaxing behavior (rather than punishing, you encourage people to give you more the next time, if they invest less, you give them a bit more… BPD patients do not do that)
BPD disturbed interaction study: neuronal level
- insula: sensitive to social norm violations (controls)
- BPD group does not show differential response to low offers from investor: insensitive to breakdown in cooperation
