The social brain: neural basis of social knowledge

Social cognition in humans is distinguished by psychological processes that allow us to make inferences about what is going on inside other people—their intentions, feelings, and thoughts. Some of these processes likely account for aspects of human social behavior that are unique, such as our culture and civilization. Most schemes divide social information processing into those processes that are relatively automatic and driven by the stimuli, versus those that are more deliberative and controlled, and sensitive to context and strategy. These distinctions are reflected in the neural structures that underlie social cognition, where there is a recent wealth of data primarily from functional neuroimaging. Here I provide a broad survey of the key abilities, processes, and ways in which to relate these to data from cognitive neuroscience

Social working memory: neurocognitive networks and directions for future research.

Navigating the social world requires the ability to maintain and manipulate information about people's beliefs, traits, and mental states. We characterize this capacity as social working memory (SWM). To date, very little research has explored this phenomenon, in part because of the assumption that general working memory systems would support working memory for social information. Various lines of research, however, suggest that social cognitive processing relies on a neurocognitive network (i.e., the "mentalizing network") that is functionally distinct from, and considered antagonistic with, the canonical working memory network. Here, we review evidence suggesting that demanding social cognition requires SWM and that both the mentalizing and canonical working memory neurocognitive networks support SWM. The neural data run counter to the common finding of parametric decreases in mentalizing regions as a function of working memory demand and suggest that the mentalizing network can support demanding cognition, when it is demanding social cognition. Implications for individual differences in social cognition and pathologies of social cognition are discussed

A Higher-Order Theory of Emotional Consciousness

Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. On this view, what differs in emotional and non-emotional states is the kind of inputs that are processed by a general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide non-conscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness

Effective connectivity reveals strategy differences in an expert calculator

Mathematical reasoning is a core component of cognition and the study of experts defines the upper limits of human cognitive abilities, which is why we are fascinated by peak performers, such as chess masters and mental calculators. Here, we investigated the neural bases of calendrical skills, i.e. the ability to rapidly identify the weekday of a particular date, in a gifted mental calculator who does not fall in the autistic spectrum, using functional MRI. Graph-based mapping of effective connectivity, but not univariate analysis, revealed distinct anatomical location of “cortical hubs” supporting the processing of well-practiced close dates and less-practiced remote dates: the former engaged predominantly occipital and medial temporal areas, whereas the latter were associated mainly with prefrontal, orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate connectivity. These results point to the effect of extensive practice on the development of expertise and long term working memory, and demonstrate the role of frontal networks in supporting performance on less practiced calculations, which incur additional processing demands. Through the example of calendrical skills, our results demonstrate that the ability to perform complex calculations is initially supported by extensive attentional and strategic resources, which, as expertise develops, are gradually replaced by access to long term working memory for familiar material

Developmental differences in the control of action selection by social information

Our everyday actions are often performed in the context of a social interaction. We previously showed that, in adults, selecting an action on the basis of either social or symbolic cues was associated with activations in the fronto-parietal cognitive control network, whereas the presence and use of social versus symbolic cues was in addition associated with activations in the temporal and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) social brain network. Here we investigated developmental changes in these two networks. Fourteen adults (21–30 years of age) and 14 adolescents (11–16 years) followed instructions to move objects in a set of shelves. Interpretation of the instructions was conditional on the point of view of a visible “director” or the meaning of a symbolic cue (Director Present vs. Director Absent) and the number of potential referent objects in the shelves (3-object vs. 1-object). 3-object trials elicited increased fronto-parietal and temporal activations, with greater left lateral prefrontal cortex and parietal activations in adults than adolescents. Social versus symbolic information led to activations in superior dorsal MPFC, precuneus, and along the superior/middle temporal sulci. Both dorsal MPFC and left temporal clusters exhibited a Director × Object interaction, with greater activation when participants needed to consider the directors' viewpoints. This effect differed with age in dorsal MPFC. Adolescents showed greater activation whenever social information was present, whereas adults showed greater activation only when the directors' viewpoints were relevant to task performance. This study thus shows developmental differences in domain-general and domain-specific PFC activations associated with action selection in a social interaction context

The neural basis of bounded rational behavior

Bounded rational behaviour is commonly observed in experimental games and in real life situations. Neuroeconomics can help to understand the mental processing underlying bounded rationality and out-of-equilibrium behaviour. Here we report results from recent studies on the neural basis of limited steps of reasoning in a competitive setting – the beauty contest game. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural correlates of human mental processes in strategic games. We apply a cognitive hierarchy model to classify subject’s choices in the experimental game according to the degree of strategic reasoning so that we can identify the neural substrates of different levels of strategizing. We found a correlation between levels of strategic reasoning and activity in a neural network related to mentalizing, i.e. the ability to think about other’s thoughts and mental states. Moreover, brain data showed how complex cognitive processes subserve the higher level of reasoning about others. We describe how a cognitive hierarchy model fits both behavioural and brain data.Game theory, Bounded rationality, Neuroeconomics