Week Twelve - Social Cognition

Question 1

What is Social Cognitive Neuroscience?

Answer 1

Understanding how brain function supports the cognitive processes underlying social behaviour

Question 2

What did Walter Freeman do?

Answer 2

Performed a frontal lobotomy using an ice-pick. Was used to treat people with depression by destroying cells

Question 3

What is self-referential processing?

Answer 3

Thinking about anything that is in relation to yourself

Question 4

What is mindblindness?

Answer 4

Inability to properly represent the mental states of other

Question 5

What are the core features of autism?

Answer 5

Mindblindness
Qualitative impairment in social interaction
Repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests
These must be present in early development period

Question 6

What have eye tracing studies found regarding autistic people?

Answer 6

Normal people typically look at the eyes to get information (65% of time is spent staring at the eyes)

Autistic people tend to look at the mouth

Question 7

PET scans and schizophrenia?

Answer 7

Activity in the PFC is different in schizophrenic patients (show hypo-metabolism and little SRP)

Question 8

PET scans and depression?

Answer 8

Depressed people show high activation in SRP (think about themselves more)

Question 9

What is the self-reference effect?

Answer 9

Enhanced memory for information processed in relation to the self

Question 10

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

Answer 10

More medial prefrontal cortex with self-referential processing

Question 11

When we are asked to think about nothing, what typically occurs?

Answer 11

We actually think about ourselves in some way - this is the default mode network

Question 12

What is the Sentinel Hypothesis?

Answer 12

Default network is there to ensure we always have some idea of what is going on around us

Question 13

When is our default network most active?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Explain the study results on likert response on the self?

Answer 14

There is less deactivation in the anterior cingulate cortex associated with rating positive personality traits in comparison to negative personality traits (ie when we rate 3 or 4) there is much less signal decrease in positive than negative

Question 15

Explain Orbitofrontal damaged people and their perceptions of their conversations

Answer 15

People with orbitofrontal damage rate themselves lower than previously after watching a playback of themselves having a conversation

Controls rate higher

Question 16

What is the Theory of Mind?

Answer 16

The ability to infer the mental states of other people

Question 17

What is Empathy?

Answer 17

Our capacity to understand and respond to the unique experiences of another person

Question 18

What is Empathic Understanding?

Answer 18

A perceiver’s accuracy in inferring a target persons thoughts and feelings

Question 19

Babies and their ability to process information about faces

Answer 19

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 understanding what others are thinking (eg metaphors, jokes etc)

Question 20

What is the stimulation theory?

Answer 20

When observing another’s behaviour, we imagine it unconsciously through mirror neurons and then have a physiological response that we feel and interpret that the other person had the same feeling

INFERRING OTHER PEOPLE’S THOUGHTS

Question 21

Monkey mirror neuron experiment

Answer 21

Regardless of whether the monkey is opening the peanut himself, watching someone else do it, or even if he just hears it, the neurons have pretty much the same activity.

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

Question 22

Explain the experience and perceptionof disgust

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Explain the basis of the MPFC task in personality inference and sequencing

Answer 23

MPFC activity was associated with forming impressions but not for sequencing EVEN THOUGH they had to think about other people in both conditions.