Social Neuroscience

Question 1

what does SN involve?

Answer 1

linking mind and behaviour (psychology) to the brain (biology and neuroscience)

Question 2

what are key topics in SN similar to?

Answer 2

cognitive neuroscience, by considering decision-making and emotions over attitudes and relationships

Question 3

criticism of SN

Answer 3

reductionism- social processes must be best understood at the social level

Question 4

domain-general

Answer 4

brain areas involved in social cognition respond to everything

Question 5

domain-specific

Answer 5

brain areas only respond to social cognition

Question 6

module

Answer 6

computational routine that responds to particular inputs and is highly specialised

Question 7

theories of SN

Answer 7

theory theory
simulation theory

Question 8

theory theory

Answer 8

domain-specific

others’ minds are understood by forming a folk psychological theory, which consists of a set of concepts about others (beliefs and desires) and governing principles of how these concepts interact

Question 9

simulation theory

Answer 9

domain-general

others’ minds are understood by simulation and finding mirror neurons (neurons that fire when an animal acts and when observing the same action from another)

Question 10

common cognitive neuroscience pitfalls

Answer 10

reverse inference

voodoo correlations

the salmon

Question 11

reverse inference

Answer 11

reasoning back from the presence of brain activation to engagement of a particular cognitive function

can be improved by examining brain networks or using more precise regions

Question 12

voodoo correlations

Answer 12

if brain regions-of-interest (ROI) and definitions are based on the same data, this leads to circulatory and inflated chance of type one errors

Question 13

the salmon

Answer 13

important to use appropriate statistics and correct for multiple comparisons

Question 14

what does SN consider?

Answer 14

the extent to which cognitive and neural processes are specialised for social behaviour or shared with other non-social faculties

Question 15

what is the social brain hypothesis?

Answer 15

cognitive abilities required for navigating social environments shaped the large brains of primates relative to other animals

Question 16

computation (why)

Answer 16

prosocial behaviour

Question 17

algorithm (what)

Answer 17

associative learning

Question 18

implementation

Answer 18

(how/physical)

Question 19

brain areas that overlap with general reward learning:

Answer 19

• anterior cingulate sulcus (ACCs)
• ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)
• amygdala
• ventral striatum (Vstr)

Question 20

brain areas that are more socially specialised:

Answer 20

• anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg)
• dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC)
• temporo parietal junction (TPJ)
• superior temporal sulcus (STS)

Question 21

empathy

Answer 21

the capacity to vicariously experience and understand others’ emotions

involves shared representations and mental flexibility to enable shifts in perspective

Question 22

what precedes empathy?

Answer 22

emotional contagion and mimicry

Question 23

what results from empathy?

Answer 23

sympathy and compassion

Question 24

brain regions involved in empathy

Answer 24

ACC and insula, connected to:

• supplementary motor area (SMA) and granular insula (Ig)
• ACCs and dysgranular insula (Id)
• ACCg and argranular insula (Ia)

Question 25

pain

Answer 25

the perception of actual or threatened tissue damage and the private experience of unpleasantness

Question 26

singer (2004) found…

Answer 26

the ACC and Insula activated for self-pain and others’ pain, providing evidence of signal empathy

Question 27

ACCg

Answer 27

specialisation for others’ reward, suggesting this has a socially specialised function

Question 28

evidence for shared representations

Answer 28

placebo analgesia effect hypothesises that experimentally reducing the first-hand experience of pain should also reduce empathy for pain if empathy is ‘shared’

Question 29

evidence against shared representations

Answer 29

patients with congenital insensitivities to pain still activate ACC and anterior insula (AI)

activation for others’ pain and reward is seen in ACCg and AI, not in ACCs or posterior inula (PI) which are associated with self-pain

Question 30

domain-general or domain-specific?

Answer 30

empathy and vicarious processing seem to be both domain-general (ACCs)

and domain-specific (ACCg) with shared and non-shared neural correlates involved in this processing

Question 31

what is empathy in regard to prosocial behaviour?

Answer 31

the capacity to understand and resonate with the affect of other people

Question 32

benefit of using economic games to measure prosociality

Answer 32

reveal actual preferences through having choices become incentivised and improving subject anonymity

Question 33

computational fMRI

Answer 33

measures behaviour by choices
- uses a maths model to estimate values (how good each choice is) and correlate this with brain activity for each decision over time

Question 34

associative learning theory

Answer 34

prediction errors (PE) are the key process that drives learning

these signal the unexpectedness of our outcomes (the difference between prediction and actual outcome)

Question 35

how much we are learning is determined by:

Answer 35

1. the PE (how unexpected the outcome is)
2. the learning rate which scales the PE (determines how much the value on each trial is updated, which differs between individuals and contexts)

Question 36

what do prosocial learning tasks show?

Answer 36

higher learning rates for self, which is modulated by empathy

Question 37

what tracks prosocial PE?

Answer 37

subgenual anterior cingulate cortex

Question 38

what tracks PE regardless of beneficiary?

Answer 38

ventral striatum

Question 39

damage to sgACC…

Answer 39

disrupts learning to gain prosocial rewards

Question 40

older adults are…

Answer 40

• worse at associative learning tasks
• more willing to put in effort to help others
• show reduced self-bias during prosocial learning