Social Neuroscience

È veramente possibile comprendersi? Siamo in grado di coesistere con gli inviolabili spazi che ci separano? La psicologia cognitiva ha elaborato alcuni modelli che tentano di spiegare la comprensione dell’altro. Ma cosa accade se questo altro è un personaggio letterario? Come possiamo provare delle emozioni per dei personaggi che non esistono nella realtà? Per sceverare questi temi mi sono basata su alcune derivazioni della tradizione fenomenologica, analitica e su alcuni studi di psicologia cognitiva, partendo dall’assunto che elementi tratti dalle diverse tradizioni possano servire vicendevolmente da correttivi.

As hundreds of so-called "psychotherapies" have been foisted onto the public, all claiming to treat "mental illness," newer understandings of how the human brain actually works and the processes which drive the formations of mentation that we refer to as "the mind," demand a reassessment of what exactly we are referring to by the term "mental illness" and what kinds of intervention would be feasible in both the prevention of and recovery from cognitive and behavioral disorder. A fundamental process in the formation of an individual's mentation is the associations of experience. These associations not only account for constructive behavior, but can also lead to deleterious or negative behavior, suggesting that some associations are negative and therefore the negative behavior can be remolded through contrasting positive associations; however, to understand what this really means and how it works, we must start at the beginning and define what exactly is this negative behavior that we refer to by the term "mental illness." One of the most important axioms of life so simply but profoundly phrased by Oscar Wilde, is that "the truth is rarely pure and NEVER simple" (emphasis mine). Nothing can ever be explained by simple sound bites – oversimplification is just another word for misrepresentation – so to understand, we must truly engage the subject, and to engage the subject, we must first and foremost clearly define what it is that we are seeking to understand. In this case, it demands that we understand what exactly is mental illness.

These studies may help in understanding the biological bases of the high level of cognitive ability that is achieved during primate evolution culminating in humans.
Michael S. Gazzaniga from The Sage Center for the Study of Mind,
University of California, Santa Barbara.

It is the third edition of this book, containing several new chapters added and other modifications.
It is available on amazon.com.
The second part of this book would be named Viruses & Pathogens vs. Our Indoor Species, and it is in the making.

A growing literature illuminates the biological and evolutionary antecedents, consequences, and correlates of communication behavior. With few exceptions, however, the research is conducted outside of the communication discipline and remains unknown within the communication field. This essay offers illustrative literature reviews for several communicative behaviors and argues that the communication discipline should embrace, rather than ignore, the bioevolutionary factors involved in human social behavior.

Abstract 1. A satisfactory explanation of nightmares remains elusive. Theorists since Freud have speculated on mechanisms that produce nightmares, but no single, widely accepted explanation has emerged (see Nielsen & Levin, 2007b; Levin & Nielsen, 2007). This continuing uncertainty stems, in part, from the fact that nightmares, like dreams more generally, are expressions of human emotional memory--which itself is a complex and intransigent phenomenon. The inner workings of emotional memory have yet to be ...

Following the death of 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen who committed suicide after forced “conversion therapy,” President Barack Obama called for a nationwide ban on psychotherapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. The administration argued that because conversion therapy causes substantial psychological harm to minors, it is neither medically nor ethically appropriate. We fully agree with the President and believe that this is a step in the right direction. Of course, in addition to being unsafe as well as ethically unsound, current conversion therapy approaches aren’t actually effective at doing what they claim to do – changing sexual orientation. But we also worry that this may be a short-term legislative solution to what is really a conceptual problem. The question we ought to be asking is “what will happen if and when scientists do end up developing safe and effective technologies that can alter sexual orientation?”

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS) through the interpretation of Complex Systems Theory. I will comment Prof. Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy paper Romulus and Remus hypothesis published in September 2020. He is a neuroscientist with Boston University. His paper postulates that the PFS, defined by the author as active constructive imagination, appeared around 70,000 years ago. The author also indicates that vocalization was available to hominins in the last 600,000 years ago.

This study tested the hypothesis that human behavioral responses to psycho-social stress are sexually dimorphic and conform to the 'flight-or-fight' response for males and 'tend-and-befriend' for females. One hundred and twenty young adults (60 male, 60 female), mostly college students, served as study participants. Participants were randomly assigned to either a stress condition (Trier Social Stress Test, a standardized laboratory procedure used to induce psychosocial stress) or a control condition. Stress induction was confirmed with self-report questionnaires about perceived stress and anxiety. Participants then underwent three social decision making tasks to assess their competitive and cooperative tendencies: an Ultimatum Game, a Prisoner's Dilemma, and a Prosocial Risk Taking task. We found evidence for interactive effects of stress and sex in all three tests, and all interactions were in the same direction. Relative to controls, stressed males made lower monetary offers to their partners and tended to be less willing to behave prosocially in a hypothetical risky situation, whereas stressed females offered higher monetary amounts in the Ultimatum Game and behaved more cooperatively in the Prisoner's Dilemma. These results suggest that stress renders males more selfish and competitive, while stressed females become more other-oriented, more generous, and more cooperative. These effects are consistent with the 'flight or fight' pattern for males and the 'tend and befriend' pattern for females, respectively. The role of risk taking and empathy as possible psychological mediators of the effects of acute psychosocial stress on social decision making in men and women needs to be further investigated, along with sex differences in physiological responsiveness to stress.

Enfacement illusion is a visuo-tactile illusion elicited by being touched on one’s own face while observing another face being touched at the same time, resulting in a change in self-face recognition. Left-face stimulation is usually preferred in enfacement studies. We investigated whether left or right face stimulation has any effect on the vividness of the illusion and if any relationship exists between emphatic abilities, personality traits and vividness of the illusion. The enfacement procedure included two stimuli: a cotton swab touching to face and a syringe approaching to face. We assessed subjective feeling of the illusion using a questionnaire and morphed face evaluations between self and other. Additionally, galvanic skin response (GSR) was measured. The results indicated that the syringe elicited higher GSR than that of touching and left face stimulation was much more sensitive in discriminating synchronous and asynchronous conditions. We found a significant relationship ...

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

By adopting a cooperative perspective on the relationship between educational philosophy and interdisciplinary empirical data, the goal for this dissertation is to contribute to an ongoing discussion at the Institute of Philosophy of Education at Aarhus University. A discussion concerning whether – and if so, how – interpretations of the increasing body of neuroscientific data has the potential to qualify educational thinking.
The main theme of this dissertation is the apparent inseparable connection between a given view of humanity and the educational thinking derived from this specific interpretation: i.e. views of humanity which - from a historical perspective - to a great extent can be categorized as permeated into a clear-cut dualistic separation of the body/mind -relationship, but which at present is being challenged by an apparent monistic view, that focuses only on the human biology.
This dissertation claims that the two positions can be fused by means of a phenomenological-ecological perspective on the human being, which both recognizes the present interdisciplinary - and especially neuroscientific - data, and transcends the historical clear-cut dualism with a non-dichotomic dualistic perspective on the human being. A perspective in which the
concept of 'resonance' - on and between different levels in the biology of the human body and its surroundings - is of central importance.
By means of a theoretical-philosophical discussion, it is claimed that this phenomenological-ecological perspective offers an explanation of how consciousness is emerging, based on an integral causality. This integral causality - it is claimed - represents a ‘fusing view of humanity’. In a practical-philosophical discussion this ‘fusing view’ is compared to two distinct representatives of educational philosophy: Immanuel Kant and John Dewey, by which it is demonstrated that the phenomenological-ecological perspective can make significant contributions to their educational thinking, especially in regards to the early years of
development. Furthermore this comparison indicates that the interactions between the human organism and its surroundings - especially in the early years - are of great significance to educational thinking in general.
Due to this finding, the third discussion in this dissertation is a more specific examination of the potential contributions to educational thinking by these neuroscientific data, and the phenomenological-ecological view of human nature. Further contributions will indicate that interactions with emotionally available caregivers is of crucial importance for developing the
capacity to be part of a healthy (resonating) relationship and therefore, of central importance for educational thinking in general.
Finally Fuchs’ concept of resonance on and between levels in the human biology and its surroundings is then extended to include ‘society’ and ‘Nature (planet earth)’. A perspective in which the present state of Nature (planet earth), ‘society’ - constituted by the neocortex of the Homo sapiens sapiens - is the non-resonating factor. A factor that indicates that the goal for a global educational thinking, could be the striving for resonance on all levels.

BACKGROUND:
In spite of its indusrial usefulness and varied daily uses, lead (Pb) pollution is a widespread ecological problem that faces the humans in the 21th century. Pb was found to produces a wide range of toxic effects including neurotoxicity especially to the developing and young offspring. Recently, the utilization of herbal plants has received a significant attention where there has been rising awareness in their therapeutic use; among these is the garlic.
AIM OF THE WORK:
In light of the above, the current study is designed experimentally in female pregnant rats in order to investigate the beneficial role of garlic extract in the protection from the maternal and fetal cerebellar damage that produced by administration of different doses of Pb during pregnancy.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Positively pregnant female rats were divided into five groups; one control group, two Pb-treated groups (exposed to 160 and 320 mg/kg b.wt. of Pb, respectively) and two groups treated with both Pb and garlic (exposed to Pb as previous groups together with 250 mg/ kg b.wt. /day of garlic extract). Treatments started from day 1 till day 20 of pregnancy, where the mother rats of different experimental groups were sacrified to obtain the fetuses. Pb level in the maternal nd fetal blood and cerebellum was estimated by spectrophotometry. Specimens of the cerebellum of different mother and fetal groups were processed to histological and immunohistochemical staining for microscopic examination.
RESULTS:
The results showed that administration of Pb to pregnant rats resulted in a dose-dependent toxicity for both mothers and fetuses in the form of decrease of maternal weight gain, placental and fetal weights, brain weight and diminished fetal growth parameters, which were prominent in rat's group treated with larger dose of Pb. In Pb-treated rats, Pb level in blood and cerebellum was high when compared to the control. The histopathological examination of the cerebellum of treated dams and fetuses showed marked alterations mainly in the form of Purkinje cell degeneration and lack of deveopmet of fetal cerebellum. Co-treatment of garlic extract along with Pb resulted in a significant decrease in Pb levels as compared with those treated with Pb alone with improvement of the histopathological changes.
CONCLUSIONS:
This study was useful in evaluating the hazardous effects of uncontrolled use of Pb in general and in assessing the developmental and neurotoxicity of fetuses due to exposure during pregnancy in particular. Co-administration of garlic has beneficial effects in amelioration of Pb-induced neurotoxicity and reversing the histopathological changes of the cerebellum of mother rats and fetuses.
KEYWORDS:
garlic; glial fibrillary acidic protein; lead; purkinje cells

The young man sitting in the waiting room of our neuroimaging facility wearing skinny jeans and trainers looked like a typical Spanish 20-year-old of Moroccan origin. Yassine* was bouncy, chatting up the research assistants, and generally in good spirits. He was like so many other Barcelona youths, except he openly expressed a desire to engage in violence for jihadist causes. As we took him through a battery of tests and questionnaires, we were barely able to keep him in his seat as he kept proclaiming his willingness to travel to Syria to kill himself. “I would go tomorrow, I would do it tomorrow,” he said. When we probed for the sincerity of his claim, he responded, “only if we go together. You pay for the tickets”, with a wink and a smile. Less budding foreign fighter and more extremist provocateur, he enjoyed insulting us with impunity and showed us the middle finger as he left. And yet, Yassine agreed to let us scan his brain – for the first ever brain scan study on radicalisation.

מאמר זה מציג את פעולת המוח על בסיס מודל שפיתח חוקר המוח ריצ'ארד דייוידסון בהקשרים של למידה יומיומית בכיתה. המאמר פותח צוהר להבנה של תהליכים שמתחוללים במוחו של תלמיד ו/או מורה מרגע לרגע בכיתה. תהליכים אלו הם תמיד שילוב של תחושות גופניות, רגשות, נורמות חברתיות המתווכים על ידי מוח חברתי-רגשי. הצגת המודל מוביל לדיון בתוכנית לימודים המשלבת תרגולים כמו מיינדפולנס שניגשים באופן ישיר לטיפוח תשתיות מוחיות-תודעתיות רגשיות-חברתיות שהן בסיס לכל למידה ולכל פעולה אחרת בחיים.

Najnowsze badania sugerują, że psychopatia nie musi być zaburzeniem struktury osobowości o charakterze trwałym, czyli odstępstwem od normy. Być może jest ona jedynie odrębną strategią ewolucyjną, którą można zidentyfikować u 2-3% członków społeczeństwa. Ewolucja może być więc monetą o dwóch stronach – na awersie mamy moralność, a na rewersie psychopatię.

This is the framing document for the presentation “English as Therapy” delivered September 27 to the 2015 NeuroELT Brain Days International Conference, Kyoto, Japan. This presentation introduces CNE (Cognitive Neuroeducation), a new learning-based, noninvasive, nonpharmacological modality for intervention in cognitive and behavioral disorder with the promise of full recovery therefrom. CNE is unique in that it is the only modality in the fields of learning and mental health that is strictly tied to how the brain actually works within a tightly constructed, exhaustively comprehensive model of the mind as formed exclusively from rigorous hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis.

Humans – through the biological determinants of evolutionary selection – have developed a uniquely social brain. In the human social brain, learning is the principal mechanism that shapes all behavior, and language is the medium through which learning takes place and cognition is formed. Cognition is the understanding of ourselves, others and the world around us. But the processes of cognitive development – that is, how we learn, what we learn, how we understand the world around us, and, consequently, how we are molded to behave – can be blocked or can become distorted.

In this presentation we explore the processes in the human social brain by which learning is realized and cognition and behavior are shaped, and the principles of CNE that can be applied, both in the classroom and in a remedial setting, to stimulate these processes in engendering positive learning realization and self-affirming, socially adaptable behavior.

Where and how does the brain code reward during social behaviour? Almost all elements of the brain’s reward circuit are modulated during social behaviour. The striatum in particular is activated by rewards in social situations. However, its role in social behaviour is still poorly understood. Here we attempt to review its participation in social behaviours of different species ranging from voles to humans. Human fMRI experiments show that the striatum is reliably active in relation to others’ rewards, to reward inequity and also while learning about social agents. Social contact and rearing conditions have long-lasting effects on behaviour, striatal anatomy and physiology in rodents and primates. The striatum also plays a critical role in pair-bond formation and maintenance in monogamous voles. We review recent findings from single neuron recordings showing that the striatum contains cells that link own reward to self or others’ actions. These signals might be used to solve the agency-credit assignment problem: the question of whose action was responsible for the reward. Activity in the striatum has been hypothesized to integrate actions with rewards. The picture that emerges from this review is that the striatum is a general-purpose subcortical region capable of integrating social information into coding of social action and reward.

""Largely based on pre-theory that ties high testosterone (T) to masculinity, and low T to femininity, high T is mainly studied in relation to aggression, mating, sexuality, and challenge, and low T with parenting. Evidence, however, fails to support this, and the social variability in T is better accounted for by a competition–
nurturance trade-off as per the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds (van Anders et al., 2011). Four key domains are discussed: adult–infant interactions, sexual desire, sexual behavior, and partnering. Empirical engagements with gender/sex are shown to lead to important insights over assumptions about masculinity–femininity. Humans are discussed within a comparative framework that attends to cross species principles informed by human insights alongside human-specific particularities like social constructions, which are critical to evolutionary understandings of the social role of T. This paper thus integrates seemingly orthogonal perspectives to allow for transformative approaches to an empirically supported social phenomenology of T.""

Solitary confinement is not cruel and unusual punishment. It is cruel and unusual if one or more of its accompanying material conditions result in a wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain upon an individual. This requirement is met when such conditions involve a "deprivation of basic identifiable human needs" to an extent that they inflict harm or create a "substantial risk of serious harm" and they are enacted with "deliberate indifference" by prison personnel. With limited exceptions, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have perpetuated a narrow application of these standards. In particular, Courts have often discounted the generalized mental pain caused by extreme isolation. Accordingly, Courts have often neglected the duration of solitary confinement as an autonomous aspect of constitutional scrutiny. Growing neuroscientific research has emphasized that social interaction and environmental stimulation are of vital importance for physiologi...

Special issue of "Culture Unbound". Through an introduction and six original articles, the issue investigates a variety of cultural and scientific discourses and practices that in different ways are related to neuroscience and the brain.

The special issue was edited by guest editors Peter Bengtsen and Kristofer Hansson.

This book explores current advances in the scientific study of the inter-relationships among culture, mind and brain. The contributors draw from social sciences, psychology and neuroscience to show the interplay of biology, cognition, and social contexts in human experience. Part 1 of the book includes three sections presenting diverse theoretical models lines of research. The first section addresses the dynamic interactions of culture, mind and brain on multiple timescales: evolutionary, co-evolutionary, historical, developmental and everyday contexts. The section section considers ways of thinking about the brain in social context, beginning with an enactivist perspective, and then presenting a constructivist view of emotion, experimental studies of priming effects, and a discussion of emergence of the sense of agency. A third section considers how social coordination and cooperation are achieved through joint action, acquiring social norms, and engaging in ritual practices. Part 2 of the book considers the intersection of neuroscience and social science in specific domains, including history, spatial learning, education, music, literature, film, global mental health, urbanization, the Internet, and neurodiversity. Taken together the chapters contribute to a multilevel, multiscale view of the co-construction of mind, brain and culture. An epilogue considers the challenges and prospects for future interdisciplinary work.

In the biological sciences there has been, in recent years, what we might call an ‘opening towards the environment’ and a reduced belief in genetic determinism. Research into neural plasticity, niche construction and epigenetics are the main fields in promoting this change of perspective. My main interest in this research, as a sociologist, is to try to indicate to what degree these lines of research also can be applied to develop theory in my own discipline. I want to ask to what extent knowledge from biological research can lead us to ask new sociological questions about the research object of the sociologist: human societies. In this article, I will concentrate on the neurosciences and try to argue that a specific neurosociology is possible even though this ‘subfield’ must be a kind of metasociological reflection over social processes.The question raised by this article is what a neurosociological way of understanding society may involve. A tentative programme may be to show how findings from the neurosciences can inform the objects of sociological research. These objects concern variations within human societies, between them and, furthermore, the study of processes within these societies. In order to explain what these – very general – formulations may mean let me describe my argument point by point: 1) first, I will present some research where the neurosciences are taken as the object of sociological inquiry in order to indicate how these studies themselves do not belong to neurosociology. 2) Then, I want to sketch briefly the historical conflicts between sociology and biology and, thereby, clarify the differences between biological and sociological research questions. 3) On this background I will discuss some examples that I hold to be important neurosociological findings across different cultures, 4) then I will look into claims of a technically mediated change of our brains and, finally, 5) the question of historical profiles in the way some of our neural chemistry is triggered. In the process, I will discuss a range of studies that, usually unbeknownst to their authors, promote neurosociological perspectives.

While scientists across the academy have abandoned the nature/nurture dichotomy, evidence for the influences of society on our biology is greater than ever. This article reviews new developments in the biological sciences—in the sub-fields of genetics, hormones, and neuroscience—with special attention to the implications for sociologists interested in gender.  The article closes with an argument that embracing these developments has both theoretical and methodological promise and can enhance rather than harm research and activism regarding gender equality and other social hierarchies.

Racism and in-group favoritism is prevalent in our society and has been studied in Social Psychology for a long time. Recently it has become possible to investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie these in-group biases, and hence this review will give an overview of recent developments on the topic. Rather than relying on a single brain region or network, it seems that subtle changes in neural activation across the brain, depending on the modalities involved, underlie how we divide the world into ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
These insights have important implications for our understanding of how in-group biases develop and could potentially lead to new insights on how to reduce them.