Week Twelve - Social Cognition Flashcards
What is Social Cognitive Neuroscience?
Understanding how brain function supports the cognitive processes underlying social behaviour
What did Walter Freeman do?
Performed a frontal lobotomy using an ice-pick. Was used to treat people with depression by destroying cells
What is self-referential processing?
Thinking about anything that is in relation to yourself
What is mindblindness?
Inability to properly represent the mental states of other
What are the core features of autism?
Mindblindness
Qualitative impairment in social interaction
Repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests
These must be present in early development period
What have eye tracing studies found regarding autistic people?
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
PET scans and schizophrenia?
Activity in the PFC is different in schizophrenic patients (show hypo-metabolism and little SRP)
PET scans and depression?
Depressed people show high activation in SRP (think about themselves more)
What is the self-reference effect?
Enhanced memory for information processed in relation to the self
What have studies found in relation to the self-reference effect?
More medial prefrontal cortex with self-referential processing
When we are asked to think about nothing, what typically occurs?
We actually think about ourselves in some way - this is the default mode network
What is the Sentinel Hypothesis?
Default network is there to ensure we always have some idea of what is going on around us
When is our default network most active?
When we are inwardly focused and there is a lack of attention on external stimuli
Explain the study results on likert response on the self?
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
Explain Orbitofrontal damaged people and their perceptions of their conversations
People with orbitofrontal damage rate themselves lower than previously after watching a playback of themselves having a conversation
Controls rate higher
What is the Theory of Mind?
The ability to infer the mental states of other people
What is Empathy?
Our capacity to understand and respond to the unique experiences of another person
What is Empathic Understanding?
A perceiver’s accuracy in inferring a target persons thoughts and feelings
Babies and their ability to process information about faces
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)
What is the stimulation theory?
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
Monkey mirror neuron experiment
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
Explain the experience and perceptionof disgust
They both activate similar regions within the anterior insula regardless of whether it is you or someone else experiencing it
Explain the basis of the MPFC task in personality inference and sequencing
MPFC activity was associated with forming impressions but not for sequencing EVEN THOUGH they had to think about other people in both conditions.
