Social Neuroscience

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The social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field that has its beginnings in the early 1990s. Here, biological and social research approaches are viewed as complementary approaches to knowledge that examine the socially grown structures beyond the individual. Research areas are the neural, humoral, cellular and genetic mechanisms that underlie these structures. A mutual influence on different structural levels is assumed. A special focus is on the functional consideration of brain processes. The processes examined are located both on an intra-individual level, such as social perception and social cognition, and on an inter-individual level, such as social interaction and social influence. The integration of the different research approaches requires interdisciplinary expertise and the integration of different data levels.

methodology

Due to the different mother disciplines, the interdisciplinary field makes use of a large number of different methodologies ( fMRI , TMS , EEG , EKG , EMG , endocrinology , SCR , lesion studies, animal models). The challenge here lies in the integration of human data from social approaches with biological animal models. The basic idea of ​​the research is to find explanations for preceding conditions, to localize involved structures, to describe underlying processes and to predict their consequences. The multiple determinism of human behavior makes it necessary to take into account different levels of analysis when building theories. Complex functional constructs (e.g. prejudice , attachment , empathy , trust ) have to be broken down into their sub-units in order to represent meaningful units of analysis.

Doctrine of multilevel analysis

The doctrine of multilevel analysis goes back to Cacioppo and Berntson (1992) and is to be regarded as a basic principle of the research field of social neurosciences. It takes into account the different data and analysis levels and is based on three principles:

  1. Multiple antecedents (= previous conditions): A target event on a structural level can have different triggers within this level or across different levels; consequently, if a trigger is hidden, it leads to incomplete understanding.
  2. Non-additive determinism: The properties of the whole cannot necessarily be predicted additively from the properties of the components.
  3. Reciprocal determinism: There is a reciprocal influence between biological and social factors with regard to the formation of the target behavior.

The golden triangle of human neurosciences

Since the various research approaches of the social neurosciences allow different conclusions, Decety and Cacioppo (2010) propose the consideration of three interrelated and equally important approaches:

  1. Behavioral data (e.g. reaction time, choice, judgment)
  2. Physiological measurements (e.g. imaging procedures ): the measurements provide correlative data from the human brain.
  3. Animal and human experiments (lesion studies, TMS, experimental pharmacology ): the experimental data allow causal statements.

Only the merging of different approaches, e.g. B. in meta-analyzes enables deeper insights to be gained and a scientific consensus to be found on a subject area, even across tasks and situations.

The social brain

The adaptation of the brain to social processes explains the complexity of the human brain. The investigation of the neural structures on which social cognition is based raises the question of whether there are specific social interaction modules or whether social cognition uses general cognitive mechanisms. Topics examined so far are the neural foundations of emotional face processing, empathy, compassion, cognitive perspective acceptance ( theory of mind ), as well as moral feelings and actions.

Research field

There are many areas in which the findings from the social neurosciences can flow. Classical works exist e.g. B. to recognize the emotional facial expression, as well as impairments in social behavior with preserved intelligence after damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex . Damasio's work illustrates the role of emotion in social decision-making. Current fields of research deal, among other things, with mental health, in the maintenance of which social relationships play a fundamental role. The research focus is on the psychopathology of the social brain and its plasticity. The understanding of mental disorders can be expanded into a holistic picture by integrating social, psychological and neurological mechanisms. Another line of research is empathy research. Empathy is expressed on a neural level, i. H. When looking at a person's emotions, a similar pattern of activation is found as when experiencing the same emotion yourself. The diversity of the research areas illustrates the social potential of the social neurosciences.

See also

literature

  • J. Decety , JT Cacioppo: Handbook of Social Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, New York 2011.
  • J. Decety, W. Ickes: The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. MIT press, Cambridge 2009.
  • M. De Haan, MR Gunnar: Handbook of Developmental Social Neuroscience. The Guilford Press, New York 2009.

Web links

overview
Single topics
Institutions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JT Cacioppo, GG Berntson, J. Decety: Social neuroscience and its relation to social psychology. In: Social Cognition. 28, 2010, pp. 675-684.
  2. ↑ a b J. T. Cacioppo, J. Decety: Social neuroscience: Challenges and opportunities in the study of complex behavior. In: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2011. doi: 10.1111 / j.1749-6632.2010.05858.x
  3. ↑ JT Cacioppo, GG Berntson: Social psychological contributions to the decade of the brain: Doctrine of multilevel analysis. In: American Psychologist . 47, 1992, pp. 1019-1028.
  4. ^ J. Decety, TT Cacioppo: Frontiers in human neuroscience, the golden triangle, and beyond. In: Perspectives on Psychological Science. 5, 2010, pp. 767-771.
  5. ^ R. Adolphs: The Social Brain: Neural basis of social knowledge. In: Annual Review of Psychology. 60, 2009, pp. 693-716.
  6. ^ R. Adolphs, D. Tranel, H. Damasio, A. Damasio: Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. In: Nature. 372, 1994, pp. 669-672.
  7. ^ AR Damasio: The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 351, 1996, pp. 1413-1420.
  8. ↑ JT Cacioppo et al.: Social neuroscience: Progress and implications for mental health. In: Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2, 2007, pp. 99-123.
  9. ↑ T. Singer, C. Lamm: The social neuroscience of empathy. In: The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience 2009: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1156, 2009, pp. 81-96.