UA 35 Spr25 Duman Chp1 Jan21

Social Neuroscience

An attempt to understand how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the presence of others, through neural mechanisms.

Hyperscanning

A technique involving simultaneous recording from two or more brains using fMRI or EEG to study social interactions.

Domain Specificity

The concept that certain cognitive processes or brain regions are specialized for processing only one type of information.

Mirror Neurons

Neurons that respond to both self-behavior and other-behavior, allowing for understanding of intentions and emotions during social interactions.

Reverse Inference

A method where one attempts to infer the nature of cognition based on neural data, often associated with the activation of specific brain regions.

Reductionism

A critique of social neuroscience suggesting that it oversimplifies social processes by focusing solely on brain mechanisms, ignoring social, economic, and historical contexts.

Social Information

Information regarding social interactions that may be influenced by less stable and definite factors compared to other types of information.

Networking in Social Neuroscience

The movement from understanding neural regions to understanding networks and the flow of information among them in social contexts.

Social Psychology

A field that traditionally poses questions about social behavior, which social neuroscience seeks to answer using cognitive neuroscience methods.

The Social Brain

Refers to specialized neural mechanisms that support social processing, not strictly modular but potentially involving varying degrees of specialization.