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This document consists of a complete summary of the book and articles of NSBED. It is written in English, since the exam is in English as well.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Social NeuroscienceMRI: changes in blood flow in the brain. Different patterns of thought result in different patterns of
brain activity.
Activity in regions of one person’s brain can reliably elicit activity in other regions of another person’s
brain during social interaction. For instance, in a trusting relationship, when one person makes a
decision the others person’s brain ‘lights up’ their reward pathways, even before any reward is
actually obtained.
Hyperscanning: the simultaneous recording from two or more different brains.
Cognition in an individual brain is characterized by a network of flowing signals between different
regions of the brain. Social interactions between individuals can be characterized by the same
principle: a kind of ‘mega-brain’ in which different regions in different brains can have mutual
influence over each other. This is caused by our ability to perceive, interpret, and act on the social
behavior of others.
The Emerge of Social Neuroscience
Social psychology (Allport, 1968): an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.
Social neuroscience: an attempt to understand and explain, using neural mechanisms, how the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied
presence of others.
Links together cognitive and social psychology and linking ‘mind’ with brain.
Cognitive psychology: the study of mental processes such as thinking, perceiving, speaking, acting,
and planning. It tends to dissect these processes into different submechanisms and explain complex
behavior in terms of their interaction.
Psychological processes such as perceived social support can affect biological processes such as
immune functioning.
Social neuroscience should be concerned primarily with the underlying mechanisms, and these are
unlikely to be localized to discrete brain regions.
Current researchers tend to work on topics such as emotions, self-regulations, and decision-making
but feel that the discipline as a whole needs mor statistical and methodological rigor, needs to be
more ecologically valid, and needs more interdisciplinary integration.
Ecological validity: an approach or measure that is meaningful outside of the laboratory context.
Uncanny valley: the tendency for robots that resemble humans but are imperfect in some way to
elicit unease.
The Social Brain?
Issue with social neuroscience: the extent to which the ‘social brain’ can be considered distinct from
all the other functions that the brain carries out. (Is the social brain special in any way?)
There might me particular neural substates in the brain that are involved in social cognition
but not in other types of cognitive processing.
Modularity: the notion that certain cognitive processes (or regions of the brain) are restricted in the
type of information they process and the type of processing carried out.
Domain specificity: the idea that a cognitive process (or brain region) is specialized for processing only
one particular kind of information.
Module: term given to a computational routine that responds to particular inputs and performs a
particular computation on them; that is, a routine that is highly specialized in terms of what it does to
what. It only processes one kind of input.
, In this modular view, the social brain is special by virtue of brain mechanisms that are
specifically dedicated to social processes. Moreover, it is claimed that these mechanisms
evolved to tackle specific challenges within the social environment.
To some critics, this view of the mind and brain resembles phrenology
Phrenologists: created maps of the brain containing highly specialized functions which were based on
anecdotal observations of individual skull shapes.
Spunt and Adolphs (2017) speculate that very narrow specialization may emerge developmentally
through experience and via fine-tuning of brain regions initiated by top-down category knowledge
(e.g. face v. non-face, social v. non-social). It may alternatively be the case that we have to rethink
domain specificity in terms of ‘limited domains’ rather than ‘single domains’.
We can argue that the ‘social brain’ is not specialized uniquely for social behavior but is also involved
in non-social aspects of cognition.
Mitchell (2009) notes that there are certain regions of the brain (e.g. the medial prefrontal cortex)
that are activated in fMRI studies by a wide range of social phenomena such as evaluating attitudes,
interpreting other’s behavior, and emotional experience.
He suggests that social psychology is a ‘natural kind’ that distinguishes itself from other
aspects of cognition because it relates to concepts that are less stable and less definite thatn
those involved in, say, perception and action.
Another possibility is that there are particular kinds of neural mechanisms especially suited to social
processes.
Mirror neurons: respond both when an animal sees an action performed by someone else and when
they perform he same action themselves. They have been implicated in imitation, empathy, and
‘mind reading’.
,Is Neuroscience an Appropriate Level of Explanation for Studying
Social Behavior?
Reductionism: one type of explanation will become replaced with another, more basic, type of
explanation over time.
Reverse inference: an attempt to infer the nature of cognitive processes from neuroscience data.
Blank slate: the idea that the brain learns environmental contingencies without imposing any biases,
constraints, or preexisting knowledge on that learning. In the blank slate scenario, the brain just
accepts, stores, and processes whatever information is given to it without any pre-existing biaseas,
limitations, or knowledge. According tot the blank slate, the brain is not completely redundant but
the nature of social interactions themselves are entirely attributable tot culture, society, and the
environment. The structure of our social environment is created entirely tithin the environment itself,
, reflecting arbitrary but perpetuated historical precedents. Thus, culture, society, and nature of social
interactions invent and shape themselves.
More realistic: the brain, and its underlying processes, creates constraints on social
processes.
Social processes are all in the brain, but some of them are created by environmental constraints and
historical accidents (and learned by the brain) whereas others may be caused by the inherent
organization, biases, and limitations of the brain itself.
Aggression as an Example of Interacting Levels of Explanation
Aggression is linked to resource control and perceived injustice is likely to be independent of culture
and, instead, be a biological instinct. Cultural differences may act as an ‘accelerator’ or ‘brake’ on
neurobiological incentives concerning status and fairness.
Levels of testosterone in males are correlated with levels of aggression in people of low SES
individuals but not high SES. So high SES acts as a brake on biological influences.
Gene-Culture Co-Evolution
Cultural neuroscience: in interdisciplinary field bridging cultural psychology, neurosciences, and
neurogenetics that explains how neurobiological processes give rise to cultural values, practices, and
beliefs as well as how culture shapes neurobiological processes. (brain influences culture and vice
versa).
Gene-culture co-evolution: culture can influence gene frequencies in a population, and genes have an
impact on cultural evolution via psychological predispositions.
Certain genotypes may predispose people to create particular features in their environment
and aspects of a given culture may tend to favor individuals of a given genotype.
o Different cultures have evolved different biological solutions that effect either
haemoglobin concentration or blood oxygen saturation.
In a collectivist culture the goals of social group are emphasized over individual goals (e.g. in East
Asian countries).
In an individualist culture the goals of the individual are emphasized over the social group (e.g. in
Western countries).
there is evidence that gens linked to increased social sensitivity are more prevalent in collectivist
cultures, whereas genes linked to reduced social sensitivity are more prevalent in individualist
cultures.
Serotonin transporter gene occurs in two variants, or alleles, termed short and long. Carriers of the
short allele show more mental health problems following a negative life event, but also show more
responsiveness to positive life events particularly in the social realm. That is, the short gene confers
social sensitivity rather than being, say, a ‘gene for depression’. The short is more prevalent in
collectivist cultures.
The mu-opioid receptor exists in two allelic variants, and the G version is linked to greater sensitivity
to social rejection and is more prevalent in collectivist cultures.
Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) is an enzyme that breaks down serotonin and dopamine and exist in
different variants. The low expressing variant has been linked to antisocial behaviors following
negative life events but this genotype often reports the lowest psychological problems following
positive life experiences. That is, it conveys social sensitivity. It is also more common in collectivist
cultures.
Chapter 2: The Methods of Social Neuroscience
Temporal resolution: the accuracy with which one can measure when an event is occurring. The
effects os brain damage are permanent and so this has no temporal resolution as such. Methods such
as EEG/ERP, TMS, and single-cell recording have millisecond resolution. fMRI has a temporal
resolution of several seconds that reflects the slower hemodynamic response.
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