Social Cognition

Understanding self

Understanding others (previously learned, perspectives, physical cues)

Social competition

Questions

What brain areas mediate the concept of self?

How do we percieve facial and bodily movements, and how does this help us understand others?

The Self

Self-reflexive thought: the ability to consider one’s own being as an object that is subject to objective consideration

Fugue states: transient states of confusion in which self-relevant knowledge is temporarily unavailable to consciousness

Self reflection → brain areas involved

  • Midline cortical regions involved in the default mode of brain processing

  • Limbic/paralimbic regions involved in interoception

Embodiment: the sense of being localised within one’s own body

  • Extrastriate visual cortex: engaged when humans visually process human bodies

  • Tempoparietal junction: linked to out-of-body experiences

Perception of social cues in face and body

Facial expression processing

  • Ventral pathway: fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal cortex process the invariant aspects of faces to discriminate them from other objects. Linked to semantic and episodic knowledge about individuals

  • Dorsal pathway: superior temporal sulcus processes dynamic facial features such as emotional expressions, mouth movements and gaze shifts.

Evidence for partial independence of invariant and dynamic facial processing of faces

  • Damage to ventral regions of the temporal lobe: can identify emotional facial expressions, but cannot recognise individuals by their facial features

  • Damage to the amygdala/STS: cannot evaluate eye gaze direction/emotional expression

Eye Gaze Processing

STS neurons increase their firing when direction of head movement and eye gaze are congruent. Has a preference for actions that are meaningful and goal-directed.

Amygdala activity in response to facial expressions varies whether direction of gaze is forward or averted

Understanding Others

Trustworthiness judgement based on automatic evaluative processes

  • Untrustworthy appearance: insula activity

  • Trustworthy appearance: medial PFC, orbitofrontal cortex, and caudate

Autism

When viewing faces:

  • Reduced activation in the fusiform gyrus, STS, and amygdala - reduction in attentional allocation to faces

  • No activity increases in the STS when goal-directed biological motion sequences are violated