Building blocks of social cognition: Mirror, mentalize, share?

Abstract

During the past decade, novel approaches to study social interaction have expanded and questioned long-standing knowledge about how humans understand each other. We aim to portray and reconcile the key psychological processes and neural mechanisms underlying navigation of the social environment. Theoretical accounts mostly revolved around either abstract inferences or embodied simulations, whereas experimental studies mostly focused on theory of mind or mentalizing, empathy, and action imitation. The tension between theories of and experiments on social cognition is systematically revisited to foster new theoretical and empirical studies in the fields. We finally retrace differential impairments in social capacities as a means to re-conceptualize psychopathological disturbance in psychiatry, including schizophrenia, borderline personality, and autism.

Neural mechanisms of deception in a social context: an fMRI replication study

“…Given the role of the socio-cognitive aspects of deception, the brain mechanisms can be further studied in clinical research and criminology. It has already been shown that clinical disorders, including schizophrenia, borderline personality, and autism spectrum disorders, are linked to altered activity and connectivity of TOMrelated regions in the human brain 67,68 . Additionally, individuals with psychopathic traits are believed to have dysfunction in TOM processes 69,70 , which can lead to distorted attitudes towards deception [71][72][73] .…”

The influence of relationship closeness on default-mode network connectivity during social interactions

“…Building on previous findings indicating that social relationships influence the reward value of shared social experiences and that the DMN has a specialized role in social cognition, our results demonstrate that the context of close relationships shapes functional network dynamics during social interactions as a function of the closeness people feel towards a partner. These results and our approach have important implications for clinical samples characterized by difficulties with social cognition and forming relationships (e.g., autism, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia) (Alcalá-López et al, 2019) and individuals who may have a history of adverse social experiences (McLaughlin et al, 2019). For example, hypoconnectivity has been observed between networks implicated in cognitive control and goal-directed processes (ECN) and processing of social stimuli (face-processing network) in relation to increased levels of autistic traits (Young et al, 2015), while individuals with a history of early life caregiving adversity show hyperconnectivity at rest between the ventral striatum and mPFC that is associated with poor social regulation (Fareri et al, 2017).…”

Die mentale Welt der Anderen

“…IPL: inferior parietal lobe; PMC: premotor cortex; IFG: inferior frontal gyrus; PCC: precuneus; mPFC: medial prefrontal cortex; TPJ: temporoparietal junction; STS: superior temporal sulcus AI: anterior insula; aMCC: anterior medial cingular cortex. Die Abbildung orientiert sich an (13,16,20,22) Foto: ©Wladimir Tantchik Spezialisierung innerhalb des ToM-Netzwerks. So zeigten beispielsweise Bzdok und Kollegen, dass sich der mPFC in Subregionen unterteilen lässt, die sich hinsichtlich der Konnektivitätsmuster, ihrer funktionellen Verbindungen mit anderen Hirnregionen, unterscheiden (34).…”