Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.
History and methods The first scholarly works about the neural bases of social cognition can be traced back to Phineas Gage, a man who survived a traumatic brain injury in 1849 and was extensively studied for resultant changes in social functioning and personality. In 1924, esteemed psychologist Gordon Allport wrote a chapter on the neural bases of social phenomenon in his textbook of social psychology. However, these works did not generate much activity in the decades that followed.
Inventions in the study of neuronal activity provided the groundwork for field development. In 1924, German physiologist and psychiatrist Hans Berger (1873–1941) recorded the electrical activity of the brain by inventing the first human electroencephalogram EEG. In 1953, Dr. Brownell and Dr. Aronow designed the first clinical positron imaging device, a prototype of a modern Positron Emission Tomography (PET). In 1971, American chemist and physicist Paul Christian Lauterbur invented the idea of MR imaging (MRI). Ph.D. in Chemistry, Michael E. Phelps developed the first PET scanner in 1973, based on discoveries of American scientists David Edmund Kuhl, Luke Chapman, and Roy Edwards, which constructed several tomographic instruments in the late 1950s.Michael E. Phelps, the Enrico Fermi Award 1998. US Department of energy. Retrieved 18.01.2025 from https://science.osti.gov/fermi/Award-Laureates/1990s/phelps
The beginning of modern social cognitive neuroscience can be traced to Michael Gazzaniga's book, Social Brain (1985), which attributed cerebral lateralization to the peculiarities of social psychological phenomenon.Lieberman, M. D. (2007). "Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes". Annu. Rev. Psychol., 58(1), 259-289. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085654 Isolated pockets of social cognitive neuroscience research emerged in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, mostly using single-unit electrophysiological recordings in nonhuman primates or neuropsychological lesion studies in humans. During this time, the closely related field of social neuroscience emerged in parallel, however it mostly focused on how social factors influenced autonomic, neuroendocrine, and immune systems. In 1996, Giacomo Rizzolatti's group made one of the most seminal discoveries in social cognitive neuroscience: the existence of mirror neurons in macaque frontoparietal cortex. The mid-1990s saw the emergence of functional positron emission tomography (PET) for humans, which enabled the neuroscientific study of abstract (and perhaps uniquely human, but this issue is still a subject of debateChristopher Krupenye et al. (2016)."Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs". Science 354,110-114(2016).DOI:10.1126/science.aaf8110Penn, D.C.; Holyoak, K.J.; Povinelli, D.J. (2008). "Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2008;31(2):109-130. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08003543) social cognitive functions such as theory of mind and mentalizing. However, PET is prohibitively expensive and requires the ingestion of radioactive tracers, thus limiting its adoption.
In the year 2000, the term social cognitive neuroscience was coined by Matthew Lieberman and Kevin Ochsner, who are from social and cognitive psychology backgrounds, respectively. This was done to integrate and brand the isolated labs doing research on the neural bases of social cognition. Also in the year 2000, Elizabeth Phelps and colleagues published the first fMRI study on social cognition, specifically on race evaluations. The adoption of fMRI, a less expensive and noninvasive neuroimaging modality, induced explosive growth in the field. In 2001, the first academic conference on social cognitive neuroscience was held at University of California, Los Angeles. The mid-2000s saw the emergence of academic societies related to the field (Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, Society for Social Neuroscience), as well as peer-reviewed journals specialized for the field (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Social Neuroscience). In the 2000s and beyond, labs conducting social cognitive neuroscience research proliferated throughout Europe, North America, East Asia, Australasia, and South America.
Starting in the late 2000s, the field began to expand its methodological repertoire by incorporating other neuroimaging modalities (e.g. electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, functional near-infrared spectroscopy), advanced computational methods (e.g. multivariate pattern analysis, causal modeling, graph theory), and brain stimulation techniques (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct-current stimulation, deep brain stimulation). Due to the volume and rigor of research in the field, the 2010s saw social cognitive neuroscience achieving mainstream acceptance in the wider fields of neuroscience and psychology.
Hyperscanning or inter-brain research is becoming the most frequent approach to studying social cognition. It is thought that exploring the correlation of neuronal activities of two or more brains in shared cognitive tasks can contribute to understanding the relationship between social experiences and neurophysiological processes.Fishburn, F. A.; Murty, V. P.; Hlutkowsky, C. O.; MacGillivray, C. E.; Bemis, L. M.; Murphy, M. E.; Huppert, T. J.; Perlman, S. B. "Putting our heads together: Interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality." Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 2018 Aug; 13(8):841-9. In 2024, inspired by research on interpersonal neural synchronization and neuroscience studies on fetal brain responses to auditory stimuli that revealed increased neuronal activity in the fetal brain when it was exposed to an unfamiliar voice stimuli,Jardri, R.; Houfflin-Debarge, V.; Delion, P.; Pruvo, J.-P.; Thomas, P.; Pins, D. (2012). "Assessing fetal response to maternal speech using a noninvasive functional brain imaging technique". International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, 30, 159– 161 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2011.11.002 the mother-fetus neurocognitive model hypothesis has been put forward opening a new research direction. According to this position, interpersonal neurophysiological processes within the biological system of this dyad provide the fetal nervous system with training for proper reactions to stimuli at the onset of cognition. The hypothesis has shown that training is successful because of neural synchronization between nervous systems that occurs through the interference of local neuronal oscillations with the low-frequency electromagnetic field of the mother's heart.
Functional anatomy
Much of social cognition is primarily subserved by two dissociable macro-scale brain networks: the mirror neuron system (MNS) and default mode network (DMN). MNS is thought to represent and identify observable actions (e.g. reaching for a cup) that are used by DMN to infer unobservable mental states, traits, and intentions (e.g. thirsty). Concordantly, the activation onset of MNS has been shown to precede DMN during social cognition. However, the extent of feedforward, feedback, and recurrent processing within and between MNS and DMN is not yet well-characterized, thus it is difficult to fully dissociate the exact functions of the two networks and their nodes.
Mirror neuron system (MNS)
Mirror neurons, first discovered in macaque frontoparietal cortex, fire when actions are either performed or observed. In humans, similar sensorimotor "mirroring" responses have been found in the brain regions listed below, which are collectively referred to as MNS. The MNS has been found to identify and represent intentional actions such as facial expressions, body language, and grasping. MNS may encode the concept of an action, not just the sensory and motor information associated with an action. As such, MNS representations have been shown to be invariant of how an action is observed (e.g. sensory modality) and how an action is performed (e.g. left versus right hand, upwards or downwards). MNS has even been found to represent actions that are described in written language.
Mechanistic theories of MNS functioning fall broadly into two camps: motor and cognitive theories. Classical motor theories posit that abstract action representations arise from simulating actions within the motor system, while newer cognitive theories propose that abstract action representations arise from the integration of multiple domains of information: perceptual, motor, semantic, and conceptual. Aside from these competing theories, there are more fundamental controversies surrounding the human MNS – even the very existence of mirror neurons in this network is debated. As such, the term "MNS" is sometimes eschewed for more functionally defined names such as "action observation network", "action identification network", and "action representation network".
The hypothesis of the mother-fetus neurocognitive model (MFN) contributes to the theory of the MNS's role in social cognition. It has been shown that MNS mirror neurons are observed only in specific cases of interpersonal dynamics that meet the MFN model conditions. The MFN model is a representation of neurophysiological processes within the biological system of the Mother-Fetus dyad that provides the fetal nervous system with training for proper reactions to stimuli at the onset of cognition.Val Danilov, I. (2024). "Child Cognitive Development with the Maternal Heartbeat: A Mother-Fetus Neurocog-nitive Model and Architecture for Bioengineering Systems". In: Ben Ahmed, M., Boudhir, A.A., Abd El-hamid Attia, H.F., Eštoková, A., Zelenáková, M. (eds) Information Systems and Technological Advances for Sustainable Development. DATA 2024. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-75329-9_24 It has been shown that local neuronal oscillations in both nervous systems are synchronized through interference with the low-frequency electromagnetic field of the mother's heart. So that the mother's heart oscillations synchronize the brain oscillations of already excited central and peripheral neuronal ensembles, similar in both organisms, due to physiological entrainment within the shared ecosystem. Therefore, the activation of specific sensorimotor networks in the mother entrains those in the child, and, because of the shared ecosystem, this engagement trains the young nervous system to respond correctly to certain sensory stimuli through statistical mechanisms based on numerous successful and unsuccessful trials. This entrainment provides subliminal perception in the young organism, similar to the Mother's intentional act that initiates the process of cognition.
Premotor cortex