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Comprehensive summary of the first 6 chapters of the book 'The Student's Guide to Social Neuroscience' by Jamie Ward.
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Samenvatting Neuroscience of Social Behavior and Emotional Disorders deel 1Jamie Ward: The Student’s Guide to Social Neuroscience
Chapter 1: Introduction to social neuroscience
The emerge of social neuroscience
Allport (1968) defined social psychology as an attempt to understand and explain, using neural
mechanisms, how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual,
imagined or implied presence of others. Most researches working in this field are drawn from the
fields of cognitive psychology, the study of mental processes. With the help of cognitive psychology,
social mechanisms can be decomposed in simpler mechanisms. The interest in this topic came from
the fact that psychological processes such as perceived social support can affect immune functioning.
The term ‘social neuroscience’ can be traced back to 1992, but before that social-neuroscientific
questions have already been investigated.
Characterization of social neuroscience in terms of localization of functions is inaccurate, and social
neuroscience should be concerned primarily with the underlying mechanisms. Current researchers in
this field feel that the discipline needs more statistical and methodological rigor (ecological validity)
and needs more interdisciplinary integration.
The social brain?
One approach of the brain is that brain is domain specific, which means that cognitive processes (or
brain regions) are specialized for processing only one particular kind of information. A module is a
routine in the brain that is specialized in terms of what it does to what. It represents phrenology. The
social brain is thus specialized for social processes and underlying mechanisms evolved to tackle
specific challenges within the social environment. Another opposite approach is that the social brain
is not specialized uniquely for social behavior but is also involved in non-social aspects of cognition.
However, there are other positions that lie in-between
these two extremes, for example that specific brain
regions have multiple functions within social
phenomena. The social brain is special because the
information is less stable and definite than those
involved in other cognitive functions like perception
and action. Another possibility is that there are
particular kinds of neural mechanisms especially suited
to social processes except for the brain’s mirror system.
Mirroring is a general property of many neurons and
they may not be tightly localized to one region.
Barrrett and Satpute (2013) offered 3 overviews of the
social and emotional brain. The first one is adomain-
specific overview, but this is not widely accepted. The
other two overviews involve the idea of brain networks,
where the 3rd overview focuses on interactions
between non-specialized units and is endorsed by the
authors (see picture). However, there is evidence that
there are also more specialized areas (e.g. from brain
lesions or DBS).
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,Is neuroscience an appropriate level of explanation for studying social behavior?
It is not enough to study social behavior only by examining brains, because one needs to situate
social behavior in social, economic and historical context. Most researchers in this field do not take a
strongly reductionist (one type of explanation will become replaced with another, more basic, type
of explanation over time) approach. Most researchers attempt to create bridges between different
levels of explanation. This is more related to the reverse inference approach, an attempt to infer the
nature of cognitive processes from neuroscience data. However, the reliability of this inference
depends on what is known about the functions of given regions, and it can be improved by examining
networks or more precise regions. Another point is to look at other sources of evidence (next to
neuroimaging) such as TMS in which behavior itself is normally measured.
In the blank slate scenario, the brain just accepts, stores and processes whatever information is
given without any pre-existing biases or knowledge. However, the social environment does involve
culture, society, knowledge and bias. Culture, society and the nature of social interactions shape
themselves. Even in infants, social effects are seen. Social processes are all in the brain, but some of
them are created by environmental constraints and historical accidents, whereas others may be
caused by the inherent organization, biases and limitations of the brain itself.
Cultural differences may act as an accelerator or brake on biological tendencies. For example, levels
of testosterone are correlated with the levels of aggression in people with a low SES, but not with a
high SES.
A neuroscientific answer for what causes culture is that neural mechanisms respond to the repeated
patterns of behavior in others, whom we affiliate positively with, and increase the likelihood that our
own neural mechanisms will generate those behaviors. Culture cannot create itself in the absence of
appropriate biological entities. The variety within cultures is more caused by different environments.
However, biology specifies which cultural variants are likely or possible. Impossibility of some
cultures is created by the nature of brain-based mechanisms, even though it manifests itself in terms
of the nature of social processes.
Cultural neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field, bringing cultural psychology, neurosciences and
neurogenetics together. It explains how neurobiological processes give rise to cultural values and
how culture shapes biological processes. Gene-culture co-evolution means that culture can influence
gene frequencies in a population, and genes have an impact on cultural evolution via psychological
predispositions. There is a good fit between a particular genotype and a particular cultural practice.
In a collectivist culture, the goals of the social group are emphasized over individual goals. This is the
opposite of an individualistic culture. There is evidence that genes linked to social sensitivity are
more prevalent in collectivists cultures and vice versa (the short serotonin allel). The G allelic variant
is linked to greater sensitivity to social rejection. Also, monoamine oxidase A that breaks down
dopamine and serotonin have different variants. The low expressing variant conveys social
sensitivity. However, these findings are all correlational.
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,Chapter 2: The methods of social neuroscience
Temporal resolution: the accuracy with which one can
measure when an event is occurring.
Spatial resolution: the accuracy with which one can measure
where an event is occurring.
Invasiveness: whether or not the equipment is located
internally or externally.
1. Psychological measures
à Performance based measures:
Advantages: They reflect actual behavior; they are simple to analyze and interpret
Disadvantages: They are hard to link directly to neural substrates; less ecological validity
à Mental chronometry: the study of the time course of information processing in the
human nervous system. An example is the time to identify a face. Decisions are faster when a
face is smiling. It can be that faces tend to be stored in the brain in an expressive pose, or
that face recognition and expression recognition are separate but that an expression gives a
boost in recognition.
à Accuracy rates: measured in terms of error rates, percentage correct of percentile
performance in which the individual scores are recalculated relative to the population mean.
Efficiency is more related to response time.
Speed-accuracy trade-off: if people are forced to respond faster, they will tend to be less
accurate.
à Observational measures:
Advantages:
- Can be used when it is impossible to give instructions to the participant; they can be used in
naturalistic settings
Disadvantages:
- Open to human error (inter-rater reliability: the extent to which two independent
observers generate the same answer)
- Bias (can be solved with blind scoring: the observer is unaware of the status of the event
that is being scored, or with computerized methods such as eye-tracking)
Often used in infancy research, non-human research and when the experimenter does not
want the participant to know the true nature of a task.
à Preferential looking: In infant research, a number of stimuli (2) are presented and the
amount of time that the infant spends looking at each of them is scored. If the infant looks
longer at one stimulus, it is able to discriminate or to have a preference.
à Habituation: In infant research, the same stimulus is presented repeatedly and the
infant’s attention (looking time) towards the stimulus diminishes.
With preferential looking and habituation it became clear that infants have a preference for
social stimuli.
Measuring the effects of stimuli that have been processed unconsciously: can be done with
presentation of the stimulus for less than 50ms, followed by junk visual material (also known as
masking). This prevents the after image of the stimulus from persisting. We can know that the
stimulus was processed unconsciously by asking participants if they saw the stimulus, by letting them
bet on their performance, or to use SCR, EMG, startle responses etc.
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, 2. Survey measures
Advantages:
- Investigating how the participant thinks and feels, instead of investigating their behavior
- Used in situations where an experimental manipulation is not possible or unethical
Disadvantages:
- Acquiescence bias (a tendency to respond affirmatively in surveys, irrespective of the
content of the question)
- Lower external validity (the extent to which a measure relates to something useful in real
life, can be solved by anonymous or confidential surveys so they will answer more honest)
- Higher chance to get a Type 1 error if combined with fMRI (getting a significant result when
in fact there is not, because fMRI measures a lot of voxels so there is a higher chance of an
error). The ‘voodoo correlation’ suggests that some key findings are Type 1 errors or at least
an inflation of the true size of an effect (correlation between survey and fMRI)
The structure and function of the neuron
The amplitude of an action potential does not vary, but the
number of action potentials propagated per second (the
spiking rate). Some neurons have a high spiking rate in some
situations but not in others, which gives rise to the functional
specialization of brain regions.
3. Bodily responses
Advantages:
- Easy to record and analyze
- Unconscious
Disadvantages:
- Not straightforward to link bodily responses to brain and cognition
à Skin conductance response: changes in conductivity as a result of mild sweating. The electoral
signal flows more easily when there is sweat. The electrodes are placed in two adjacent fingertips
with gel in between the finger and the electrode. A peak occurs between 1 and 5 seconds after
stimulus presentation. Lesions in the ventromedial frontal lobes abolish SCR to psychological
stimuli but not physical stimuli, whereas lesions to the anterior cingulate cortex abolish both.
à Electromyography: assessing electrical activity associated with muscle movement (e.g.
emotional face expressions). Also measures the eyeblink startle response, which is elicited by a
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