Lecture 1
Introduction
- Prejudice social, economic and historical context
- Prejudice is inherent to belonging to a group is there a neural correlate?
- Is there a social brain? a modular view & a non-modular view
- Triune brain model 3 evolutionary stages of the brain reptilian
(fight/flight), mammalian (emotional brain), primate (thinking brain essential
for social behaviour)
- Mirror neurons respond to seeing action and than doing that action can be
anywhere in the brain
- Psychological methods subjective measures (emotional
experience/personality questionnaires); observational measures (scoring and
counting behaviours, eye tracking); performance measures (speed & accuracy, IQ,
recognition tests, selective attention)
- Physiological methods skin conductance response (SCR), heart rate
(deceleration, acceleration, heart rate variability), EMG (startle potentiation)
- Brain imaging electrophysiological measures (single cell recordings, EEG)
- Lesion and disruption of function reverse engineering
, Lecture 3: guestlecture Prosocial Qualities of Testosterone and the Antisocial
Properties of Oxytocin
Jack van Honk
- Oxytocin is a female-type hormone, but males have it also
- Oxytocin has especially evolved in protective aggression
- Social Neuroendocrinology How do hormones influence social-emotional
behaviour? & What are the neural mechanisms by which hormones influence
social-emotional behaviour?
- Is oxytocin a social hormone and testosterone an anti-social hormone?
- Evolution of social behaviour oxytocin and vasopressin influence our social
behaviours
- Steroid hormones female: estrogen
- Testosterone anti-social hormone? Difficult to say, but it is clear that social
peptides oxytocin and vasopressin crucially depend on testosterone via
testosterone itself or its metabolite estradiol this happens in the ovaries in
women and in the brain in men
- This metabolism (testosterone to estradiol) depends on metabolite aromatase
under the influence of nicotine and alcohol testosterone levels rise when
either two rises
- Testosterone levels are very coherent to levels of dominance