Week 12: Social cognition

Question 1

What is social cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 1

Understanding how brain function supports the cognitive processes underlying social behaviour
(using neuroscience to explain social behaviour)

Question 2

What part of the brain did phineas gage have severe damage to? and what did he expereince?

Answer 2

The orbitofrontal cortex

Major personality changes

Question 3

Early procedures for schizophrenic patients with the orbitofrontal cortex?

Answer 3

Walter Freeman put an icepick into the orbitofrontal cortex and moved it around in order to destroy cells here
For schizophrenic patients, it calmed them down however, they were not themselves anymore

Question 4

What is self-referential processing?

Answer 4

Thinking about anything that is in relation to yourself

Question 5

What is mindblindness?

Answer 5

The inability to properly represent the mental states of others

Can’t understand how someone else is feeling

Question 6

What does Autism include?

Answer 6

• Mindblindness
• Qualitative impairment in social interaction
• Repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests
• Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period

There are also neurophysiological measurements (eye movements, and neural activity). But haven’t made much progress here.

Question 7

Why are eyes considered to be the window into the mind?

Answer 7

get information re: someone else’s mental states

E.g. We know if someone is looking at something they are paying attention to it

Question 8

What have eye tracing studies found regarding where we look in social interactions

Answer 8

In a normal population, we typically look at the eyes of people to get information (65% looking at eyes) can make inferences about internal mental state

Autistic patients don’t. They typically look at the mouth (may be an abnormal development of theory of mind - can’t figure out how they can use the eyes to make inferences)

Question 9

Brain activation in schizophrenia?

Answer 9

PET tracer studies with passive tasks - have found that activity in the prefrontal cortex is different in schizophrenic patients.

Schizophrenic patients are showing hypo-metabolism (less metabolism = less activation)

In normal subjects, we have a lot of activity in the regions involved in the brain areas relating to self-referential processing (PFC) but we don’t see these levels in schizophrenic patients

Question 10

What have activation studies in depressed patients found?

Answer 10

More activity here! unlike schizophrenia

• depressed patients are thinking more about themselves more than normal population
• indicates that if you spend too much time thinking about yourself it can be problematic

Question 11

What is the self reference effect?

Answer 11

Have enhanced memory for information processed in relation to the self

Question 12

What have brain activation studies found in relation to the self reference effect?

Answer 12

Medial prefrontal cortex activity is associated with self-referential processing when compared to processing words in relation to others (no difference between words in relation to others and word print)

Question 13

When asked to do nothing, what do we think about?

Answer 13

We actually think about ourselves in some way or another - this is our default network

Question 14

What is the sentinel hypothesis of the default network?

Answer 14

Default network is there to ensure we always have some idea of what is going on around us - protect from predators etc

Question 15

When is our default network more activated?

Answer 15

When we are inwardly focussed and there is a lack of attention on external stimuli

Question 16

What about when you are judging yourself?

Answer 16

When rating traits relating to yourself on a likert scale:

• When rate highly and think it is relevant to you: there is an increase in anterior cingulate cortex depending on whether its +/- we tend to overestimate ourselves on positive traits (deactivation for negative - maybe don’t apply it to ourselves as strongly)
• when rate trait as having nothing to do with you, doesn’t matter if trait is +/-

Question 17

Conversational studies including orbitofrontal damage patients?

Answer 17

• Had a conversation
• Rated themselves
• Rewatched the conversation and re-rated
• Controls rate themselves higher after they see the video
• Those with damage rate themselves lower (they get embarrassed and recognise mistakes they didn’t in the moment)

Question 18

What is the theory of mind?

Answer 18

the ability to infer the mental state of other people

gaze, facial expressions etc used to make infereces

Question 19

What is empathy?

Answer 19

our capacity to understand and respond to unique experiences of another person

Question 20

What is empathic accuracy?

Answer 20

A perceivers accuracy in inferring a target person’s thoughts and feelings

Question 21

Can babies process information about faces?

Answer 21

Babies are quick to process information about faces and use the same neural structures for this as adults BUT it takes much longer before they start incorporating contextual information and start understanding what others are thinking (metaphors, irony, jokes)

Question 22

What is the Sally-Anne false belief task?

Answer 22

Sally places her marble in the basket - and then exits
Anne transfers Sally’s marble to a drawer
Sally reenters
Where does she look for the marble?
(Being able to take on someone else’s point of view)

Question 23

The adult equivalent of the Sally-Anne experiment results?

Answer 23

Watch movies that start with someone placing a ball on a table in front of an opaque screen and then it rolls behind- 4 conditions (ball moves or not, the interviewer sees this or not)

• participants reaction time is still influenced by the interviewer

Question 24

What is the simulation theory of inferring other peoples thoughts?

Answer 24

• When observing another persons behaviour, we imagine it unconsciously through mirror neurons
• Then have a physiological response that we feel and interpret to understand how that person is feeling

Question 25

Mirror neuron experiments?

Answer 25

Monkey experiment focusing on a mirror neuron:
Regardless of whether monkey is opening the peanut himself, watching someone else do it or even if he doesn’t see it but hears it, the neuron has pretty much the same activity

When we watch others we understand what they are doing because our brain activates the neural structures that would be engaged if we were carrying out the action ourselves

Question 26

The experience and perception of disgust and pain?

Answer 26

Each of these activate similar regions within the anterior insula regardless of whether it is you or someone else experiencing it

Question 27

Studies of medial prefrontal cortex activation in thinking of external and internal states of others?

Answer 27

MPFC activity is associated with forming impressions but not for sequencing individuals

Even though they had to think about other people in both conditions, ONLY the personality inference task required thinking about others internal states

Question 28

What is the issue with implanting electrodes into the brain?

Answer 28

Opens up infection possibilities

• Can be done during brain surgery as the brain is already open for whatever reason

Question 29

What can people with ALS develop?

Answer 29

Locked-in syndrome

• They have normal cognition but are unable to speak due to the loss of voluntary muscle control

Question 30

What are some things that have been used for those with ALS to communicate via?

Answer 30

Can communicate using a letter board and a camera recording eye movement to allow the selection of items
Limited as certain light conditions can make eye tracking difficult

Electrode strips in brain - detects signals generated when patient tries to move her right hand, transmits signals to a tablet that translates into letters etc - 2 words per minute

Question 31

What has the ability to communicate been associated with?

Answer 31

A greater quality of life