Social Neuroscience Flashcards
Neuroscience research of social cognition can be broadly categorized along these two dimensions:
Study of the neural basis of the feeling, understanding and evaluation of self
Study of the neural basis of the recognition, understanding and evaluation of others.
Self-reflection
Experience yourself experiencing
Think abstractly about yourself
Become the object of your own thought process.
Plan for the future and your place in it.
Default mode network:
a set of brain regions active when NOT referencing external events or stimuli
Become more active when not engaged in a task.
Reflects a resting state activity or “Default Mode” of the brain.
May form the basis for self reference and reflection.
Medial prefrontal cortex and self reflection
Similar findings associated with recalling photos taken by the participant or someone else.
Viewed photos and judged if they took the photo or if someone else did.
Founds greater activity (less deactivation) of the medial prefrontal cortex when recalling information about the photo they took themselves.
Implies that the regions is invovled in aspects of self referencing.
self-relevance vs valence in self reflection
Participants judged personal relevance of personality characteristics.
Medial Prefrontal Cortex (MPFC)
Self relevancy of words, cognitive aspects of self reflection.
Ventral anterior cingulate was related to the valence of the trait.
More active for positive traits.
Emotional aspects of self reflection.
VMPFC Lesions
Impairments in personal and social decision making.
Understand social rules but have difficulty judging the appropriateness of their social interactions or behaviors.
Make the same decisions repeatedly even though they lead to negative consequences.
Decisions are based on immediate reward regardless of future consequences.
VMPFC allows emotion to influence decision making and judgment Iowa Gambling Task)
Also impacts Moral Decision Making.
Koenig and moral decision making
Location of lesion in 6 patients suffering from alterations in moral judgments.
Particularly impaired in making personal moral judgments – trolley car scenario
Performed normally when judgments were based on impersonal moral scenarios.
Development of moral competency
VMPFC is involved in developing moral competency – understanding and adopting moral rules.
When VMPFC Lesions occur early in life (D-vMPFC in figure) participants are more likely violate moral rules for personal gain.
Does not occur with controls or VMPFC lesions that occur in adulthood.
Rate of violation is greater when lesion occurred earlier in life.
Mental state attribution
Right Temporal parietal junction may play a role.
Becomes active when considering the thoughts of others but not when considering other aspects.
Activates when reading about thoughts of others.
Unable to consider thoughts of others when disrupted using TMS
What does stimulation of the Tempo-parietal junction result in?
Tempo-parietal junction - stimulation can result in out of body experiences
Extrastriate body area
Extrastriate body area responds preferentially to the perception and imagination of body parts.
May be specialized for the selection of information for social processing.
TMS and Extrastriate Body Area
TMS studies confirm the causal role of TPJ/EBA in processing information related to body parts.
TMS of EBA also results in delayed RT in a grip posture recognition task.
Control stimulation over other cortical regions does not result in the same impairment.
Biological Motion
Social interaction relies on evaluation of body language.
Not just recognition of body parts, but also what those parts are doing.
Speaks to its possible survival importance
Recent research has suggested the existence of neural regions specific for processing of biological motion.
Point light biological motion -
distinguish motion from shape
Superior temporal sulcus and biological function
Superior temporal sulcus active in response to the perception of biological motion.
Distinct from:
Area MT - perception of general motion
EBA - perception of body parts
FFA - perception of faces
Haxby and faces
Haxby has proposed two parallel pathways for the perception of faces.
Person recognition from faces
invariant facial features.
purpose of identifying the person and connecting that information to semantic knowledge.
Ventral pathway:
Fusiform face area –> anterior temporal lobe
Dynamic features of faces
processing of changing facial features
eye gaze, mouth movements, facial expression
Superior temporal sulcus, parietal cortex, amygdala
Important for speech perception, understanding of emotion
fMRI evidence for a distinction between person and emotion recognition.
Faces on a screen were gradually changed in both identity and emotion.
Ventral regions including fusiform face areas are more sensitive to the identify of the face.
Dorsal regions including the superior temporal sulcus is more sensitive to the emotion of the face.
social expectancy and its connection to face recognition
Brain areas associated with faces and biological motion will also respond when there is a lack of congruence.
Positive reaction when a negative one is expected and visa versa,
Increase in activity in superior temporal sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus.
Indicates that knowledge of social expectancy provides a context for evaluation of faces and actions.
social categorization
Can be both automatic and controlled.
Shaped by culture, personal beliefs, social group, social status, etc.
May be expressed implicitly but controlled or suppressed to meet social expectations.
Serve both an important survival function and a dangerous social function.
N170 and faces
ERP that is most sensitive to faces.
Represents structural encoding of faces.
Reflects activity in a number of face related processing regions including occipital face area and fusiform face area.
N170 and categorization
Differences at N170 (140-200 ms) for:
Asians viewing Caucasian faces.
Caucasian’s viewing Asian Faces
Does not matter whether you attend to these features or not.
Suggests that information about racial group is extracted rapidly and automatically from faces.
Suggests more difficult structural encoding of other race faces.
FFA and categorization of races
Different race faces result in different processing in fusiform face area.
Accounts for differences in remembering self and other race faces.
May be related to expertise with other race faces.
Possible systems related to racial bias
Social bias and stereotypes may be implicit but can be controlled. Suggest three possible systems that :
automatically response to other social groups
monitor and detect conflicts related to bias.
control bias reactions and responses.
Implicit Association Test
Measure of implicit bias.
Respond with one hand to one category and good words.
Respond with other hand to second category and bad words.
Switch pairings.
Response times reflect implicit bias towards one category.
Startle eye blink response test
Implicit response to noxious stimuli including an airpuff, loud noise, electric shock.
Increases when we dislike or are more afraid of something.
Decreases when we approve or like something.
Measures your implicit bias towards external stimuli.
Implicit bias and emotion
Show black faces to white participants
Amygdala activity increases with increasing bias measured by
A: IAT
B: Startle eye-blink response
Suggests basic emotional responses to stereotypes may be automatic.
Can be attenuated when faces are familiar, shown for longer or when one attends to personal rather than racial features.
Error Related Negativity
Frontal - negative response observed when one makes an incorrect response.
Related to the recognition of a mistake.
Indicates monitoring of the appropriateness and correctness of behavior.
Weapons Identification Task
Identify each target as either a weapon or tool.
Primed by white or black faces.
All white participants
Measure EEG during weapons identification task
Weapons Identification Task results
Reveals identification of racial bias in individuals making response errors.
Larger ERN to Black-tool errors
Saying a tool is a weapon when preceded by a black face.
Indicates the recognition of ones own racial bias.
Correlated with reaction time on the subsequent trial.
Larger when one is internally motivated to regulate prejudice.
Suggests online monitoring of inappropriate bias and association.
amygdala and black faces
Amygdala was more active for black than white faces when faces were shown for 30 ms.
Frontal regions were more active for black than white faces when faces were shown for 525 ms.
Suggests they play a role in evaluation that can modulate amygdala activity
Prefrontal cortex and racial recognition
Increases in activity when other race faces are shown for longer periods
Associated with correlated decrease in amygdala.
PFC activity increases with greater bias as indicated by the IAT.
Suggests - those with greater bias require more prefrontal activity to control or suppress automatic responses.
Frontal asymmetry and Control
Growing evidence that more left frontal resting alpha activity indicates greater ability to suppress negative emotions.
Same individuals are more likely to approach than avoid – have a tendency to social interaction.
Also will automatically regulated negative emotional reaction.
Have the same negative emotion as others, but recover more quickly.
Ochsner (2004) investigated ability to reappraise stimuli.
Enhance negative emotion by taking a personal perspective.
Decrease negative emotion by taking a detached perspective.
Found that in either case similar frontal and cingulate regions were recruited.
Similar regions to those we discussed as involved in emotional control and monitoring.
Frontal regions and conscious regulation
Activity in the amygdala was modulated by task.
Increased when participants enhanced the negative emotion.
Decreased when participants reappraised the emotion.
Suggests frontal regions play a general role in modulation of emotion.
Sally-Anne task - what does it tell us about theory of mind?
Theory of mind is required to understand sally’s reaction in the scenario.
This explicit form of TOM develops at 3-4.
Theory of mind in other species
Species appropriate tests of a false beliefs test suggest that they do have TOM.
May be a difference between implicit expression of TOM ability and the explicit representation of the beliefs associated with theory of mind.
Implicit vs Explicit Theory of Mind
Implicit - ability to internally represent the mental state of others.
Explicit - “I know that sally thinks the doll is in the basinet when it is really in Sally’s toy box”
Supports that theory of mind may develop earlier.
Mental state attribution - which regions are involved?
Right Temporal parietal junction may play a role.
Becomes active when considering the thoughts of others but not when considering other aspects.
Activates when reading about thoughts of others.
Unable to consider thoughts of others when disrupted using TMS
What is the connection between theory of mind and mental state attribution?
Some suggest that TOM involves attributing mental states to others.
Gallagher and Frith (2003) - Simulation Hypothesis
Medial prefrontal cortex is a key brain area for theory of mind
Important for understanding beliefs of others.
May use the same mechanisms for understanding other as understanding ourselves.
General role in social cognition – considering oneself or another.
