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Social Neuroscience
interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how bioligical systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior
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Size of cortex scales with
size of social groups
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Phineas Gage after injury
- fitful, irreverent, indulgivng in profanity
- plans of future operation abandoned and replaced
- unable to continue work, lack of inhibition
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Where was Phineas Gage's lesion?
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
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Self-related words and memory
Memory is better for self-related words
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why is memory for self-related words better?
because as we are evaluating an adjective, we are able to draw on associations from long-term representations. we cannot do this for other people
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which brain region involved in self-referential processing (rumination)
medial prefronal cotex
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does KC have a sense of self even without episodic memory?
um?
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Default network
- Regions that are more active during passive fixation than when making abstract/concrete judgments on words
- mPFC
- highly active at "rest"
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Default network activity shown by
PET study - resting levels of cerebral blood flow
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Fixation study
- active task vs. passive fixation-
- passive fixation associated with default network activation and self-referential processing
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Default Network hihgly active during these tasks
- autobiographical memory
- envisioning the future
- theory of mind
- moral decision making
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Theory of Mind
ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, intents, desires, pretedning, knowledge, etc) to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own
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Theory of Mind story example
burglar who just robbed a store stopped by police because he dropped his glove, burglar gives himself up
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TOM stories have greater
mPFC activation
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TOM cartoon examples
- piano hitting man
- guy with marker around his eyes from telescope
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Saxe and Kanwisher (2003)
- false belief story - Emily and John car
- false photograph story - apple on ground photo on tree
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Saxe & Wexler experiement stages
- 1. localize TOM region of Temporal Parietal Junciton (TPJ) by comparing response during False belief (TOM) stories to false photograph (non-TOM) stories
- 2. Subjects read stores that describe either thoughts, bodily sensations, or appearance of another person
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Saxe & Wechsler results of TPJ response
TPJ associated wiht thoughts (thoughts and false belief stories are the same line in graph)
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Controversy about rTPJ functions
for Spatial cuing paradigm, the invalid condition elicits a larger neural response
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Other theory of mind structures
Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS)
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STS activity is greater for
Congruent vs. Incongruent tasks (integrating eye gaze with mental states)
(checkerboard image and persons eyes)
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Autism and mPFC
Correlation between functional activity in ventral mPFC and score on the social subscale of the ADIS
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Viewers with autism spend more time fixating on
the mouth and body , while normal viewers spent more time on teh eyes
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Structural and functional abnormalities in autism
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We observe both ____and ______activation during both self- and other- based social processing
mPFC and rTPJ
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are the same systems involved in understand the self and understanding others?
dunno?
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Simulation Theory
TOM is based on an ability to put ourselves in the shoes of another person, using our own minds to simulate what might be going on in the minds of someone else
empathy botox example
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