1/14 - Introduction

➔ “The glory and scum of the universe”

➔ SOCIAL BRAIN HYPOTHESIS - brain size is large in humans bc of our complex social
circles
◆ Impression formation and making sense of others
◆ Building relationships through trust, cooperation and attachment
◆ Navigating conflict, rejection, and grief
◆ Intergroup relations, morality, and pathology
● Implicit bias (IAT)
➔ Course goals
◆ Learn how brain CHECK SLIDES
➔ Grades
◆ Reading responses - 15%
◆ Midterm (MC + SR) - 25%
◆ Final (not cumulative) (MC + SR) - 30%
◆ Paper - 2500 words - 30% (i’m assuming but check slides anyway lol)
● Pick a social media app and evaluate its design features from the
perspective of social neuroscience
○ How do these features activate specific neural mechanisms
○ What are the behavioral consequences
○ How might these design features be changed to improve social
relationships or promote well-being
➔ Policies
◆ No plagiarism, no late assignments, attend all classes, etc
◆ Dean’s excuse accepted
➔ A brief history of social neuro
◆ Plato - thought of the head as the center of thought, etc
◆ Erasistratus
● Noted disruption in young man’s heartbeat when stepmother entered
room (first known use of psychophysiology)
◆ Angelo Mosso (Turin, Italy, late 1800s) CHECK SLIDES
◆ Phineas Gage
◆ 1990s - development of functional neuroimaging
● 2001 - Ochsner and Lieberman coin term “social cognitive neuroscience”
◆ John Cacioppo
➔ Social cognitive neuroscience (check slides for breakdown)
➔ Social neuroscience - approach to studying mechanisms of social behavior by
considering the structure and function of neural systems as they operate in social
contexts
◆ General assumption is that higher brain functions evolved in order to support
social behavior
◆ Questions (2 basic categories):
● 1. Brain mapping
○ What is the neural location of ___ ?
○ Method: take subject, administer stimuli, see what brain regions
lights up in correspondence
○ Assumptions:
◆ psychological variable is clearly defined
◆ task is valid
◆ neural correlates are not too distributed
◆ idea of a direct neural substrate makes sense
 ○ Ex: Empathy can be seen on a neural level!!!
● 2. Psychological hypothesis testing
○ What is the relationship between psychological variables and
behavior?
◆ Is racial prejudice driven by threat processing?
◆ Are people generous out of self-interest or concern for
others?
◆ Is revenge rewarding?
○ Assumptions
◆ Brain activation is a valid indicator of variable or behavior
● Always relies on reverse interest
● task is valid
● neural correlates are not too distributed
◆ Ex: dorsal striatum activates in correlation with the decision
to take revenge
➔ The promise of social neuroscience
◆ Create clearer understanding of the very concepts in social cognition by
developing parsimonious accounts of where and how complex functions are
instantiated in the brain
◆ Determine whether similar mechanisms underpin different social phenomena
◆ Breakdown and differentiate social phenomena into the dissociable constituent
functions (e.g. as has happened for memory)
◆ CHECK SLIDES

***mentalizing = ToM

1/30 - Mindreading I
➔ Triangle triangle circle video; Ikea ad
◆ Humans tend to emotionally anthropomorphize EVERYTHING
➔ From perception to understanding
◆ Perceiving emotions from facial expressions
○ Perceiving: objective observational; “this is a cookie”
○ Feeling: attaching emotion; “I feel hungry”
● 6 universal emotions: happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust, surprise
○ Neural basis:
◆ FEAR: amy
● SM (complete bilateral amy destruction) shows
strong deficits when trying to recognize fear (fine
w/other emotions)
○ Seeing whites of eyes drives up amy
response in normal people
○ Patient SM also doesn’t fixate on eyes as
much; focuses more on nose
◆ DISGUST: insula and BG
○ How universal are they?
◆ Constructionist approach
● Conceptualization: takes input and translates it based on what you know
about the world
● Core affect:
● language:
◆ Mentalizing (ToM)