Social Neuroscience and Self-Awareness Quiz

Social Neuroscience and Related Concepts

• Social Neuroscience: Studies the relationship between brain activity and social behavior.
• Social Psychology: Examines how thoughts and feelings are affected by others' presence.
• Cognitive Neuroscience: Investigates the brain's role in mental processes.
• Nature vs. Nurture: Debate on whether environment or biology shapes us; the interaction of both is accepted as the most accurate.
• Reductionism: Researchers avoid reducing complex phenomena to simple biological components.
• Social Cognitive Neuroscience Prism: Illustrates the interplay of biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors in social behavior.

Self-Awareness

• Self-Awareness: Ability to reflect on one's own traits, beliefs, abilities, and attitudes.
• Mirror Test: Used to assess self-awareness in animals (elephants, dolphins, fish); controversial due to potential inaccuracies for species relying on non-visual senses.
• Olfactory Mirror Test: Proposed for dogs, suggesting a potential for self-awareness.
• Prefrontal Cortex: Believed to be crucial for self-awareness.
• Self-Referential Stimuli: Stimuli relating to oneself.
• Representation: Organizing self-related information (traits, skills).
• Evaluation: Determining internal vs. external origins of stimuli (e.g., inner voice vs. external voice).
• Monitoring: Detecting errors, making choices, overriding habits.
• Integration: Combining traits, goals, values, and memories into a unified self-concept.
• Agency: Feeling of being the cause of one's thoughts and actions.
• Body Ownership: Perception of one's own body.

Theory of Mind and Empathy

• Theory of Mind: Ability to understand others' mental states (emotions, beliefs, intentions).

• False-Belief Task: Measures a child's grasp that others can have different beliefs.

• Modularity Theories: Propose an innate, specialized module in the brain for theory of mind (TPJ - Temporoparietal Junction). The right TPJ is more deeply involved than the left one.

• Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ): Play a key role in social and cognitive functions, attention reorientation, empathy, and agency.

• Simulation Theories: Suggest we understand others by mentally putting ourselves in their shoes.

• Mirror Neurons: Activated by observing others' actions (externally); also active when planning our own actions (internally). Four steps involve execution/observation of actions for prediction, mirror neuron activation via action observation, externally triggered motor neuron activity does not cause action in observer, and beliefs/intentions are attributed to person observed

• **Executive Theory:**Theory of mind relies on the ability to suppress own thoughts/actions.

• Empathy: Ability to understand and share another's feelings.

• Emotional Empathy: Automatic emotional responses to others' emotions (emotional contagion); perception-action model involved (when we perceive one's emotional state, its actions and their representations related to the emotions are triggered in your brain).

• Cognitive Empathy: Adopting another's perspective to infer their emotional state (cognitive effort needed).

• Brain Areas Involved (Emotional Empathy): Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), inferior parietal lobule.

• Brain Areas Involved (Cognitive Empathy): VMPFC/DMPFC, medial temporal lobe, superior temporal sulcus, and temporal poles.

Components of Physical Pain

• Perceptual Dimension (Physical Pain): Detection of the pain (Insula + Somatosensory cortex).
• Affective Dimension (Physical Pain): Unpleasant emotional response to pain (ACC).

Pain Regulation

• Regulation of Pain: Strategies individuals use to cope with pain (RVPFC).

Social Pain

• Social Exclusion: Lack of social interaction.
• Cyberball Task: fMRI study showing social exclusion activates areas related to the affective dimension of physical pain (ACC), similar to those involved in physical pain regulation (RVPFC).
• SPOT Theory (Social Pain Overlap Theory): Neural overlap between social and physical pain.

Altruism and its Neural Basis

• Altruism: Helping behavior for the good of others.
• Kin Selection: Tendency to help relatives.
• Reciprocal Altruism: Helping others with the expectation of future return.
• Negative-State Relief Model: Helping others to reduce our own feelings of distress.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis: Helping only when the costs are lower than benefits.
• Joy of Giving: Similar brain areas activated as for other rewards (e.g., VTA, dorsal/ventral striatum).

Psychopaths and Neural Deficits

• Psychopaths: Lack empathy, remorse, guilt.
• Amygdala: Often shows smaller size, damage or lower activity.

Cooperation, Trust, and Game Theory

• Game Theory: Mathematical approach used to explain animal and human behavior in social/political contexts.
• Prisoner's Dilemma: Game that illustrates how cooperation and selfishness intersect. (defecting: prioritizes individual gain, cooperating: mutual benefit)
• Trust Game: Game illustrating trust through investment.

Test your knowledge on social neuroscience and the concept of self-awareness. This quiz covers key terms and theories on how brain activity relates to social behavior, cognitive processes, and the intricacies of self-reflection. Explore the debates surrounding nature vs. nurture and reductionism in psychology.