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NSBED social neuroscience UU lecture notes
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Lecture notesLecture 1: introduction
September 2nd 2020
Combination of sociology, psychology and neuroscience:
- Sociology: social behavior studied from group perspective
o People are more favorable towards our own group.
o Thus everyone is prejudiced towards outgroups
o To understand a prejudice, we need to understand the social, economic and
historical context.
- Social psychology: how motivation and emotion effect our social behavior.
o Example: dehumanization. It’s a term that steps away from the actual
content.
o We need to understand underlying motivations and emotions.
- Neuroscience: looking at brain level.
o Example: oxytocin, the love drug. But only for the in-group.
social neuroscience links all these.
Is there something like: the social brain?
- Are there specialized parts and routes that perform very specific functions (modular
brain)?
- Or is it a result of many routines and structures (non-modular)?
- In general the brain is non-modular. Social and non-social cognition rely on each
other and evolve hand-in-hand.
- In general: bigger brains lead to changes in both social and non-social intelligence.
- Alternative hypothesis (social intelligence hypothesis): social pressure of living in
groups has led to increase of intelligence in social and non-social domains.
o General cognition is a product of social cognition.
Evolution of the brain:
- Triune brain model (MacLean, 1949)
o The brain is an accumulation of brain regions that can be divided in three
stages.
o Reptilian brain = sub cortex = action-reaction machinery = quite modular.
o Mammalian brain = limbic system = emotionality, behavioral flexibility =
module-like.
o Primate brain = neo-cortex = rationality, behavioral control = non-modular.
o From inside out the brain has evolved and these extra parts were added.
o The newer layers can control the older layers to some extent.
o Large part of our behavior is still controlled by older parts of our brain,
because the crosstalk is not always ideal. Depending on the context we can
control the older mechanism to certain extents.
o Mirror neurons might be modular, but they are in the primate brain.
- Mirror neurons:
o Serve observational learning.
, o Respond to self-behavior and other-behavior.
o There may be comparable systems for emotion and sensation as well as for
action (pain, empathy etc.).
- The social brain seems to be a mixed mode of levels of modularity depending on the
function.
- Network approach is better than looking at specific regions.
Methods
Psychological methods: behavioral and cognitive measures
Subjective measures: emotional experience measured by questionnaires.
- Questionnaire is more structured than an interview.
- POMS: current mood
- Personality questionnaires are used too because personality traits shape behavior
and strongly related to emotional disorders.
- Often used as a control variable to check if groups are similar.
- Useful to correlate with other measures too, links with brain activity for example.
- With highly validated questionnaires studies can be compared too.
Observational measures: frequency of behavior.
- What will the participant do = what will be measured.
- Often used in animal and infant studies.
- Cameras can be used to make measurements more reliable.
- But also: eye-tracking studies.
Performance measures: reaction time or accuracy is measured.
- Speed-accuracy trade off = tells us about the processing speed of a participant.
- Restricted method, but it is real behavior and the measures are very stable because
you can do multiple.
- IQ and recognition tests are examples too.
- Selective attention: implicit association task and cueing tasks.
o Stroop task is another example.
o Classical stroop is with colors.
o Emotional stroop: emotional words, thus emotions interfere.
o Facial fear stroop: interference of a facial expression which has been showed
shortly.
High trait angriness slower naming of the color after seeing an
angry face.
Your brain will confront the angry face and thus thinking about the
color is slower.
Combination of both biological and psychological measurements gives the best outcomes.
Physiological methods: skin, heart and muscle activity.
The body is controlled by the brain through the spinal cord via the parasympathetic or
sympathetic nervous system levels of arousal.
, - You indirectly measure the amount of stress.
Goal = measure bodily reactions and look at the relation to behavior.
Skin conductance: sweat gland activity
- SCR in short
- Sweat gland reactivity is measured.
- Peak is seen between 1-5 seconds after an emotional occurance.
- Can occur in absence of conscious perception.
Heart rate & respiration: fight flight preparation
- First: deceleration. Heart rate goes down to be able to attack later, to prepare the
body.
- Later: acceleration: higher heart rate to escape or attack.
- Heart rate variability (HRV)
o More variability = rest = parasympathetic
o Less variability = concentration and enhanced attention = sympathetic.
- More variability is useful because it helps you to be flexible and enables you to
rapidly react on a threat.
EMG: muscle activity (automatically)
- Muscle activity is measured by electrodes, measures action potentials.
- Facial muscle activity is often measured.
- Affective empathy: we mimic the facial expression we see, to a lesser extent and can
be very subtle.
- Startle potentiation is an example. You blink and tighten your neck muscles to
protect your eyes and spine, but your entire body reacts. Muscle activity between
the eye is measured, you cannot control this.
o In a stressful situation your startle is stronger.
Brain imaging and lesion methods
Brain imaging
Electrophysiology: single-cell recordings and EEG
Structural imaging: MRI and DTI
Functional imaging: FMRI and PET
Know the basics of neuron structure and action potentials.
Single cell recordings: measure the firing rate and potential differences.
- You measure the number of action potentials in a certain time.
- Electrode can be implanted intra- or extracellular of the axon.
- Only in animals, because it is unethical
Electroencephalography (EEG): picks up neural activity of a large number of cells
- Due to the column-like organization of the cortex this is possible.
- Therefore it is limited to the cortex only (+ very deep).
, - Electrodes are placed on the head.
- Usage: frequency bands approach.
o You tease apart the frequencies from raw signals, which is very noisy.
o Delta-waves (1-4 Hz): motivational system, bottom-up drive (from limbic
system).
o Beta-waves (12-30 Hz): cortex, top-down modulation.
o Balance between delta and beta: are we driven by our cortical or subcortical
system? Whether we are driven by urges or rationality. Can be used socially
and emotionally and explain how someone reacts to situations.
- Usage: event-related potentials.
o EEG signal is averaged over many trials, synchronized with some event.
o Patterns start to emerge if you take a lot of trials.
o Tells you about place and timing of a response in the brain.
o The results tell you something about the location, amplitude and timing due
to events.
o The N170 is related to face processing. Measured in the FFA. Negative peak
(thus N..), about 170ms after seeing a face. Tells us that a certain area is
active in face processing.
o Advantages: direct relation/measure, very rapid. It has an excellent temporal
resolution.
o Disadvantages: signal is derived from multiple sources at the same time,
location is not certain. Thus the spatial resolution is poor.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- Better spatial resolution.
- Relies on alignment of water molecules.
- You put someone in a magnetic field. The water molecules start to align due to the
strong magnet.
- During a scan, a radio signal is transmitter through the area you are interested in.
that switches the direction of water molecules, very briefly only. That re-allignment
will send an automatic signal (you measure this). The strength of the re-allignment is
important, not the amount of water, because that differs in the body part.
Functional MRI (fMRI)
- Hemodynamic method: neural activity consumes oxygen, thus needs blood.
- Blood oxygenation is measured.
- Oxygen slows re-alignment of water molecules (this signal you measure again).
- You measure the amount of oxygen present in the blood on a certain spot in the
brain.
- Non-invasive method (unlike PET substance is injected).
- An active brain region = when there is a greater response in one condition relative to
another.
- Good spatial resolution (1mm3 can be measured), but a bad temporal resolution.
o Relies on the BOLD response: amount of oxygen is indicated a couple of
seconds before the activation. Initial dip overcompensation
undershoot.
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