1. Meeting of Minds: The medial frontal cortex and social cognition by David M. Amodio & Chris D. Frith (2006). Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 7, 268-277. Medial Frontal cortex: 3 divisions 1.Orbital (orMFC): BA 14 & 25 2.Anterior (arMFC): BA 10 & 32 3.Posterior (prMFC): 24,9 & 8

2. Social cognition: all the processes that deal with knowledge of the self, perceptions of others including their internal somatic and mental states, and interpersonal motivations Functional divisions of MFC Pr MFC: Evaluating social consequences of one’s actions Ar MFC: Self knowledge, person perception, mentalizing oMFC: Evaluating social consequences of outcomes ( outcomes are broader than actions; one may highly value and outcome, such as getting a raise, but devalue the action required for the outcome such as kissing up to the boss).

3. prMFC: evaluating social consequences of one’s actions Action monitoring, error correction, conflict monitoring between intentions/actions Assessment of actions against desires, values, and goals. Self-selected actions more so than directed ones

4. arMFC: Self knowledge, person perception, mentalizing Evaluation of self-related traits Monitoring of one’s emotional state Thinking about others: as others become more familiar activation tends to move more to the front (anterior-orbital) of arMFC Theory of mind: attributing mental states to others

5. Cartoon used to measure ‘mentalizing.’

6. oMFC: Evaluating social consequences of outcomes Evaluates and prioritizes outcomes of actions/situations Rates reward value of stimuli and responses Deals with outcome itself, rather than outcomes of actions. Focus on degree of regret in various outcomes

7. Studies with pain perception suggest that as activation moves more forward pain is less tied to sensory inputs and interpreted more abstractly. Anterior activation also found when making judgments about reputation of other’s and self