1. Does Social Neuroscience Contribute to social cognition?
9.00 Robin Dunbar : Evolution and the social brain
9.50 Cecilia Heyes : Mirror Neurons: From Origins to Function
11.00 Ian Apperly : Controlled and automatic mindreading in children and adults
11.50 Claus Lamm : Empathy, Prosocial and Moral Behavior
13.40 Karin Roelofs : Neuroendocrine mechanisms of social behavior
14.50 Debate

2. Does Social Neuroscience Contribute to social cognition?
Debate with all speakers
Discussant: Klaus Fiedler Moderator: Frank Van Overwalle

3. Goal of Social neuroscience
Social neuroscience integrates ideas from multiple research areas in psychology and neuroscience to address questions about social processes in the mind and brain
New descipline since around 2005
Goal of Social neuroscience

4. ESAN: European Social Affective Neuroscience (2008)
SANS: Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (2008)
S4SN: Society for Social Neuroscience (2010)
Dedicated societies

5. Dedicated journals

6. Approaches (Amodio, Social Cognition, 2010)
Social Brain Mapping
Where are high-level social psychological processes located in the brain?
By scanning participants’ brains, we study the neural basis of …
romantic love while viewing pictures of significant others > strangers (Aron et al., 2005).
self while judging whether trait adjectives describe the self > another person (Kelley et al., 2002; Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005).
social information processing while judging animate > inanimate objects (Mitchell, Heatherton, & Macrae, 2002).
Question: do we identify the critical processes and brain areas?
Approaches (Amodio, Social Cognition, 2010)

7. Social Brain Mapping Approaches
Mirror / Mentalizing Networks specialized for social processing
Approaches

8. Social Brain Mapping Approaches
Since processing in the brain creates / requires memory traces, it is legitimate to ask where high-level psychological processes are located (eliminating subsidiary processes)
Motivation:
Social Brain Hypothesis
Dedicated methods:
fMRI Adaptation
fMRI Pattern analysis
Approaches

9. Social Brain Mapping Approaches Very exciting !
However, the brain is an economic device, using very similar areas for social and non-social processing, showing some overlap of…
ToM -and- attention reorientation in TPJ
High abstract thinking on people -and- objects in mPFC
Very exciting !
Approaches

10. Approaches (Amodio, Social Cognition, 2010)
Social Hypothesis Testing
The use of new methods for assessing psychological variables instead of RT or cognitive load manipulations
ERP: event-related potentials
fMRI: functional magnetic resonance imaging & related methods
Approaches (Amodio, Social Cognition, 2010)

11. Social Hypothesis Testing
A single core trait inference system: implicit/spontaneous activations when reading behaviors are extended under explicit/intentional instructions to infer a trait from behaviors
Approaches

12. Social Hypothesis Testing
The application of methods from behavioral research is often limited:
RT (because presentation takes longer)
Cognitive load (because secondary task activates other areas of no interest)
Interactions (do not show summation of waves in ERPs)
Approaches

13. Methodological issues
Construct validity: what does activation in a brain area mean? (lack of clear 1-to-1 mapping does not allow reverse inference)
Solutions:
Localizer (to identify the region of interest independently)
Correlation of brain activity with behavioral measure
Beware of inflated voodoo correlations – no independent testing or control of multiple testing
Fortunately, there is strong control of multiple testing in fMRI analysis itself
Methodological issues

14. What are the major contributions (success stories) of social neuroscience to the understanding of social behavior?
What have we discovered anew?
What have neuroimaging methods contributed over and above behavioral methods such as RT?
What are the major disappointments of social neuroscience (and is it possible to do something about it)?
Future: What are threats and critical issues / questions
Questions for debate

15. The debate In a first round,
each of the speakers addresses one or more of these three questions in a short contribution (maximum 3-5 minutes)
the discussant focuses on what he considers the most critical points in social neuroscience. He also addresses some of the points raised in the first round (maximum 10 minutes)
In a second round,
all speakers may interact and respond to the discussant’s critique, and he may respond as well (later or interactively)
the public may joint in at this point as well.
The debate