Part 1: Volume Overview: Analyses of the Social Brain through the Lens of Human Brain Imaging

2013 ◽  
pp. 15-32
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Imaging ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
The Social

The Social Brain and the Myth of Empathy

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Young
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Operational Models ◽  
The Brain

ArgumentNeuroscience research has created multiple versions of the human brain. The “social brain” is one version and it is the subject of this paper. Most image-based research in the field of social neuroscience is task-driven: the brain is asked to respond to a cognitive (perceptual) stimulus. The tasks are derived from theories, operational models, and back-stories now circulating in social neuroscience. The social brain comes with a distinctive back-story, an evolutionary history organized around three, interconnected themes: mind-reading, empathy, and the emergence of self-consciousness. This paper focuses on how empathy has been incorporated into the social brain and redefined via parallel research streams, employing a shared, imaging technology. The concluding section describes how these developments can be understood as signaling the emergence of a new version of human nature and the unconscious. My argument is not that empathy in the social brain is a myth, but rather that it is served by a myth consonant with the canons of science.

Firing Up the Social Brain

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gowlett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
The Social

The mastery of fire is a great human achievement which has helped shape our species. This chapter addresses the wider importance of fire, arguing that it is part of a fundamental motor of human evolution, deeply tied into our biology as well as economy and technology, and indeed a motor of the social brain. It seems likely that fire was involved in this nexus from a very early period, probably back to the time of increases in human brain size in the early Pleistocene, and indeed that it may have been a necessity for the subsequent physical evolutionary and social developments in Homo. Fire may be associated so strongly with imagery, imagination and symbolism in the modern world as a result of its primary role in effecting transformation of materials, and acting to link various strands of material culture.

People represent their own mental states more distinctly than others’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽  
Judith Mildner ◽  
Diana Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Cues

One can never know the internal workings of another person – one can only infer others’ mental states based on external cues. In contrast, each person has direct access to the contents of their own mind. Here we test the hypothesis that this privileged access shapes the way people represent internal mental experiences, such that they represent their own mental states more distinctly than the states of others. Across four studies, participants considered their own and others’ mental states; analyses measured the distinctiveness of mental state representations. Two neuroimaging studies used representational similarity analyses to demonstrate that the social brain manifests more distinct activity patterns when thinking about one’s own states versus others’. Two behavioral studies support these findings. Further, they demonstrate that people differentiate between states less as social distance increases. Together these results suggest that we represent our own mind with greater granularity than the minds of others.

The social brain paradigm and social norm puzzles

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-404
Author(s):  
Marcus Holmes ◽  
Costas Panagopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Social Norm ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
The Social

Genes can disconnect the social brain in more than one way

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 855-855
Author(s):  
André Aleman ◽  
René S. Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Hemispheric Asymmetry ◽  
Regulatory Genes ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Cortical Connectivity ◽  
The Social

Burns proposes an intriguing hypothesis by suggesting that the “schizophrenia genes” might not be regulatory genes themselves, but rather closely associated with regulatory genes directly involved in the proper growth of the social brain. We point out that this account would benefit from incorporating the effects of localized lesions and aberrant hemispheric asymmetry on cortical connectivity underlying the social brain. In addition, we argue that the evolutionary framework is superfluous.

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