An MEG Study of Silent Meaning

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 1905-1921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liina Pylkkänen ◽  
Brian McElree
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Semantic Composition ◽  
Anterior Midline ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Meaning Interpretation ◽  
Anomalous Condition ◽  
The Brain

Although research on the neural bases of language has made significant progress on how the brain accesses the meanings of words, our understanding of sentence-level semantic composition remains limited. We studied the magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses elicited by expressions whose meanings involved an element not expressed in the syntax, which enabled us to investigate the brain correlates of semantic composition without confounds from syntactic composition. Sentences such as the author began the book, which asserts that an activity was begun although no activity is mentioned in the syntax, were contrasted with control sentences such as the author wrote the book, which involved no implicit meaning. These conditions were further compared with a semantically anomalous condition (the author disgusted the book). MEG responses to the object noun showed that silent meaning and anomaly are associated with distinct effects, silent meaning, but not anomaly, eliciting increased amplitudes in the anterior midline field (AMF) at 350–450 msec. The AMF was generated in ventromedial prefrontal areas, usually implicated for social cognition and theory of mind. Our results raise the possibility that silent meaning interpretation may share mechanisms with these neighboring domains of cognition.

scholarly journals Other people’s gaze encoded as implied motion in the human brain

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (23) ◽  
pp. 13162-13167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arvid Guterstam ◽  
Andrew I. Wilterson ◽  
Davis Wachtell ◽  
Michael S. A. Graziano
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Human Motion ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Implied Motion ◽  
Motion System ◽  
The Brain

Keeping track of other people’s gaze is an essential task in social cognition and key for successfully reading other people’s intentions and beliefs (theory of mind). Recent behavioral evidence suggests that we construct an implicit model of other people’s gaze, which may incorporate physically incoherent attributes such as a construct of force-carrying beams that emanate from the eyes. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivoxel pattern analysis to test the prediction that the brain encodes gaze as implied motion streaming from an agent toward a gazed-upon object. We found that a classifier, trained to discriminate the direction of visual motion, significantly decoded the gaze direction in static images depicting a sighted face, but not a blindfolded one, from brain activity patterns in the human motion-sensitive middle temporal complex (MT+) and temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Our results demonstrate a link between the visual motion system and social brain mechanisms, in which the TPJ, a key node in theory of mind, works in concert with MT+ to encode gaze as implied motion. This model may be a fundamental aspect of social cognition that allows us to efficiently connect agents with the objects of their attention. It is as if the brain draws a quick visual sketch with moving arrows to help keep track of who is attending to what. This implicit, fluid-flow model of other people’s gaze may help explain culturally universal myths about the mind as an energy-like, flowing essence.

scholarly journals Creativity and the Social Brain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Personal Relevance ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Creative Cognition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain

The neuroscience of imagination has revealed extensive parallels between the brain correlates of creative cognition and those of social cognition. There is, however, scarcely any exchange of ideas between the different research communities that is aimed at understanding what such commonalities reveal. The evidence indicates that there are some fundamental similarities in very nature of the information processing mechanisms that underlie cognitive and social aspects of mental life that are customarily viewed to be quite distinct from one another. This chapter features reflections on these similarities by generating cross-connections between current knowledge on creative cognition and social cognition. Themes that are explored include candidate mechanisms of correspondences between creativity and social behaviour, such as the ‘intention to communicate’ (by means of expression), the ‘intention to understand’ (by means of inference and discovery), and the ‘personal relevance bias’ (by means of alertness to self-related salience and significance).

scholarly journals Predicting and Characterizing Neurodegenerative Subtypes with Multimodal Neurocognitive Signatures of Social and Cognitive Processes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Agustín Ibañez ◽  
Sol Fittipaldi ◽  
Catalina Trujillo ◽  
Tania Jaramillo ◽  
Alejandra Torres ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Functional Networks ◽  
Cognitive Screening ◽  
Multiple Group ◽  
Dimensional Classification ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Recognition Theory ◽  
Patient Groups ◽  
The Brain

Background: Social cognition is critically compromised across neurodegenerative diseases, including the behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, no previous study has used social cognition and other cognitive tasks to predict diagnoses of these conditions, let alone reporting the brain correlates of prediction outcomes. Objective: We performed a diagnostic classification analysis using social cognition, cognitive screening (CS), and executive function (EF) measures, and explored which anatomical and functional networks were associated with main predictors. Methods: Multiple group discriminant function analyses (MDAs) and ROC analyses of social cognition (facial emotional recognition, theory of mind), CS, and EF were implemented in 223 participants (bvFTD, AD, PD, controls). Gray matter volume and functional connectivity correlates of top discriminant scores were investigated. Results: Although all patient groups revealed deficits in social cognition, CS, and EF, our classification approach provided robust discriminatory characterizations. Regarding controls, probabilistic social cognition outcomes provided the best characterization for bvFTD (together with CS) and PD, but not AD (for which CS alone was the best predictor). Within patient groups, the best MDA probabilities scores yielded high classification rates for bvFTD versus PD (98.3% , social cognition), AD versus PD (98.6% , social cognition + CS), and bvFTD versus AD (71.7% , social cognition + CS). Top MDA scores were associated with specific patterns of atrophy and functional networks across neurodegenerative conditions. Conclusion: Standardized validated measures of social cognition, in combination with cognitive screening, can provide a dimensional classification with specific pathophysiological markers of neurodegeneration diagnoses.

Prediction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lasana T. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Reward ◽  
Human Survival ◽  
The Third ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Social Prediction ◽  
The Brain

The third chapter introduces prediction as a Bayesian process that ensures survival. It then focuses on social prediction—predicting other people’s behavior—exploring consistently low correlations between traits (a form of social cognition) and behavior. It then describes the brain correlates of prediction violation, social reward, and social punishment, before arguing that social cognition may not be necessary to predict other people’s behavior; instead people may rely on other heuristics such as social norms. Therefore, it discounts the importance of social cognition for this aspect of human survival.

Are Deficits in Social Cognition Linked to Autobiographical Memory in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease?

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes H. Scheidemann ◽  
Franz Petermann ◽  
Marc Schipper
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Neuropsychological Test ◽  
Clinical Group ◽  
Neuropsychological Test Battery ◽  
Fluency Task

Abstract. We investigated theory of mind (ToM) deficits in Alzheimer‘s disease (AD) and its possible connection to autobiographical memory (ABM). Patients and matched controls were evaluated and compared using a video-based ToM test, an autobiographical fluency task, and a neuropsychological test battery. We found that ToM deficits were positively associated with semantic ABM in the clinical group, whereas a positive relationship appeared between ToM and episodic ABM in controls. We hypothesize that this reflects the course of the disease as well as that semantic ABM is used for ToM processing, being still accessible in AD. Furthermore, we assume that it is also less efficient, which in turn leads to a specific deficit profile of social cognition.

Development of Reading Remediation for Dyslexic Individuals

2016 ◽  
Vol 224 (4) ◽  
pp. 240-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mélanie Bédard ◽  
Line Laplante ◽  
Julien Mercier
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Educational Neuroscience ◽  
Reading Remediation ◽  
Functional Brain ◽  
Neurophysiological Data ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Brain

Abstract. Dyslexia is a phenomenon for which the brain correlates have been studied since the beginning of the 20th century. Simultaneously, the field of education has also been studying dyslexia and its remediation, mainly through behavioral data. The last two decades have seen a growing interest in integrating neuroscience and education. This article provides a quick overview of pertinent scientific literature involving neurophysiological data on functional brain differences in dyslexia and discusses their very limited influence on the development of reading remediation for dyslexic individuals. Nevertheless, it appears that if certain conditions are met – related to the key elements of educational neuroscience and to the nature of the research questions – conceivable benefits can be expected from the integration of neurophysiological data with educational research. When neurophysiological data can be employed to overcome the limits of using behavioral data alone, researchers can both unravel phenomenon otherwise impossible to document and raise new questions.

Cognición social en niños con trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad: una revisión narrativa de la literatura

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Ma. Guillermina Yáñez-Téllez ◽  
Daniel Hernández-Torres
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Pragmatic Language ◽  
Affective Prosody ◽  
Palabras Clave

Los niños con trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad (TDAH) presentan problemas en la interacción social, los cuales pueden ser atribuidos a deficiencias en la cognición social (CS), no obstante, esta función ha sido poco estudiada en esta población. El objetivo de este trabajo fue realizar una revisión de la literatura de los últimos 18 años acerca de la CS en niños con TDAH, en los subdominios de teoría de la mente, reconocimiento de emociones en rostros, lenguaje pragmático y prosodia afectiva. Se realizó una búsqueda en las bases de datos PubMed y Scopus, combinando las siguientes palabras clave: “ADHD”, “social cognition”, “theory of mind”, “emotion recognition”, “pragmatic language” y “affective prosody”. Se seleccionaron artículos desde el 2000 hasta el 2018. El reconocimiento de emociones en rostros es el déficit en CS más reportado, encontrándose fallas en la comprensión de gestos de miedo, tristeza, felicidad y enojo, aunque no de manera consistente. Asimismo, se reportan deficiencias en la teoría de la mente, principalmente en la referencia social, entendimiento de emociones básicas, metarrepresentaciones, inferencias de segundo orden y comprensión de juicios sociales complejos.

Magnetoencephalography and the Cortical Dynamics of Language Processing

2019 ◽  
pp. 114-153
Author(s):  
Riitta Salmelin ◽  
Jan Kujala ◽  
Mia Liljeström
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Disorders ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Powerful Method ◽  
Cortical Dynamics ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Selection Of

When seeking to uncover the brain correlates of language processing, timing and location are of the essence. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) offers them both, with the highest sensitivity to cortical activity. MEG has shown its worth in revealing cortical dynamics of reading, speech perception, and speech production in adults and children, in unimpaired language processing as well as developmental and acquired language disorders. The MEG signals, once recorded, provide an extensive selection of measures for examination of neural processing. Like all other neuroimaging tools, MEG has its own strengths and limitations of which the user should be aware in order to make the best possible use of this powerful method and to generate meaningful and reliable scientific data. This chapter reviews MEG methodology and how MEG has been used to study the cortical dynamics of language.

scholarly journals Self-serving social strategies: A systematic review of social cognition in narcissism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare M. Eddy
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Clinical Samples ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Concurrent Administration ◽  
Narcissistic Personality

AbstractNarcissistic Personality Disorder is characterised by inflated self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interpersonal difficulties associated with narcissistic personality may be becoming more widespread given its increasing prevalence within the general population. This systematic review investigated the relationship between narcissistic personality traits and social cognition (i.e. theory of mind; emotion recognition; empathy; emotional intelligence) in clinical and non-clinical samples. Cognitive empathy (i.e. perspective taking) appears unlikely to be impaired, while affective empathy (relating to another’s emotion state) may be reduced in association with narcissism. Those with grandiose narcissism rate their empathic skills more highly than those with vulnerable narcissism, but concurrent administration of objective measures is rare, limiting insight into the validity of self-ratings. Rather than deficits in aspects of social cognition, the overall pattern could reflect motivation, or advantageous use of social cognitive skills to serve the self. Indeed, interpersonal strategies associated with narcissism (e.g. deception; manipulation) suggest the application of understanding another’s beliefs or desires in the context of low empathy. Further research should seek to explore performance on a wider range of emotion recognition and theory of mind tasks, and whether characteristics such as excessive jealousy and paranoia could reflect hyper-mentalizing.

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