In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and could-paradoxically-be seen as representing the "dark matter" of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations that allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are in interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies, and related fields to argue for the development of a second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really "go social"; this may also be relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition.

/pdf/toward-a-second-person-neuroscience-3cc8z1fj3t.pdf

Toward a second-person neuroscience.

Intellectual abilities in Alzheimer's disease patients: Contributions from the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI)

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10-12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing, supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted high fertility rates and large-scale cooperation with co-religionists, often contributing to success in intergroup competition and conflict. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as nonadaptive by-products of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term, cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and by-product approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate.

/pdf/the-cultural-evolution-of-prosocial-religions-3k5ywkwgmr.pdf

The cultural evolution of prosocial religions.

Behavioral mimicry—the automatic imitation of gestures, postures, mannerisms, and other motor movements—is pervasive in human interactions The current review focuses on two recent themes in the mimicry literature First, an analysis of the moderators of mimicry uncovers the various motivational, social, emotional, and personality factors that lead to more or less mimicry of an interaction partner in a given situation Second, a significant amount of recent research has identified important downstream consequences of mimicking or being mimicked by another person These include not only increased prosociality between interactants, but also unexpected effects on the individual, such as cognitive processing style, attitudes, consumer preferences, self-regulatory ability, and academic performance Behavioral mimicry is also placed in its broader context: a form of interpersonal coordination It is compared to interactional synchrony and other social contagion effects, including verbal, goal, and emotional con

The Antecedents and Consequences of Human Behavioral Mimicry

The quarterly journal of experimental psychology

As a distinct feature of human social interactions, spontaneous mimicry has been widely investigated in the past decade Research suggests that mimicry is a subtle and flexible social behavior which plays an important role for communication and affiliation However, fundamental questions like why and how people mimic still remain unclear In this paper, we evaluate past theories of why people mimic and the brain systems that implement mimicry in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience By reviewing recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies on the control of mimicry by social signals, we conclude that the subtlety and sophistication of mimicry in social contexts reflect a social top-down response modulation (STORM) which increases one's social advantage and this mechanism is most likely implemented by medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) We suggest that this STORM account of mimicry is important for our understanding of social behavior and social cognition, and provides implications for future research in autism

/pdf/social-top-down-response-modulation-storm-a-model-of-the-26zb8q17ym.pdf

Social top-down response modulation (STORM): a model of the control of mimicry in social interaction

Spontaneous mimicry of other people's actions serves an important social function, enhancing affiliation and social interaction. This mimicry can be subtly modulated by different social contexts. We recently found behavioral evidence that direct eye gaze rapidly and specifically enhances mimicry of intransitive hand movements (Wang et al., 2011). Based on past findings linking medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to both eye contact and the control of mimicry, we hypothesized that mPFC might be the neural origin of this behavioral effect. The present study aimed to test this hypothesis. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning, 20 human participants performed a simple mimicry or no-mimicry task, as previously described (Wang et al., 2011), with direct gaze present on half of the trials. As predicted, fMRI results showed that performing the task activated mirror systems, while direct gaze and inhibition of the natural tendency to mimic both engaged mPFC. Critically, we found an interaction between mimicry and eye contact in mPFC, superior temporal sulcus (STS) and inferior frontal gyrus. We then used dynamic causal modeling to contrast 12 possible models of information processing in this network. Results supported a model in which eye contact controls mimicry by modulating the connection strength from mPFC to STS. This suggests that mPFC is the originator of the gaze-mimicry interaction and that it modulates sensory input to the mirror system. Thus, our results demonstrate how different components of the social brain work together to on-line control mimicry according to the social context.

http://www.antoniahamilton.com/WangRamseyHamilton_JNSci_2011.pdf

The Control of Mimicry by Eye Contact Is Mediated by Medial Prefrontal Cortex

When two people meet in a bar, a subtle interplay of social behaviours, including eye contact and unconscious mimicry of actions play an important role in how much the individuals like each other by the end of the evening. However, it is not known how these different social signals interact. Here, we adopt a rapid mimicry paradigm, to test if eye contact can modulate mimicry on a second by second time scale. Our results show that direct eye contact rapidly and specifically enhances mimicry of hand actions. These findings have implications for understanding the role of eye contact as a controlling signal in human non-verbal social behaviour.

/pdf/eye-contact-enhances-mimicry-of-intransitive-hand-movements-1pg96c8sif.pdf

Eye contact enhances mimicry of intransitive hand movements.

Social behavior is often shaped by the rich storehouse of biographical information that we hold for other people. In our daily life, we rapidly and flexibly retrieve a host of biographical details about individuals in our social network, which often guide our decisions as we navigate complex social interactions. Even abstract traits associated with an individual, such as their political affiliation, can cue a rich cascade of person-specific knowledge. Here, we asked whether the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) serves as a hub for a distributed neural circuit that represents person knowledge. Fifty participants across two studies learned biographical information about fictitious people in a 2-d training paradigm. On day 3, they retrieved this biographical information while undergoing an fMRI scan. A series of multivariate and connectivity analyses suggest that the ATL stores abstract person identity representations. Moreover, this region coordinates interactions with a distributed network to support the flexible retrieval of person attributes. Together, our results suggest that the ATL is a central hub for representing and retrieving person knowledge.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/16/E3305.full.pdf

Dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval.

https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613(18)30066-4.pdf

Yin Wang

Papers

Social top-down response modulation (STORM): a model of the control of mimicry in social interaction

The Control of Mimicry by Eye Contact Is Mediated by Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Eye contact enhances mimicry of intransitive hand movements.

Dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval.

The Original Social Network: White Matter and Social Cognition.