In this bundle you can find the lecture notes from the course 'Neuroscience of Social Behavior and Emotional Disorders' by Utrecht University. Good luck studying!
Social neuroscience is a combination of sociology, psychology and neuroscience.
The social brain is non-modular: social behavior is the result of a network.
Evolution of social (and non-social) behavior:
When talking about emotions, it’s important to not only talk about electrical connections, but also chemical connections: neurotransmitters.
These cause synaptic transmissions.
Neurotransmitters relating strongly to emotion:
Highlights of paper by Porcelli et al.:
The core message: complex social
........Read moreSteroids hormones such as estradiol, cortisol and testosterone are important in social emotional behavior. It seems that the estrogen line developed 100 mya earlier than the male androgen line.
The sex steroids testosterone and estradiol are the playmakers.
The social peptides vasopressin (AVP) and oxytocin are the goalgetters.
T underlies the
........Read moreSocial Intelligence hypothesis: to outsmart the other, stronger animals, humans have to join forces. The ability to understand and predict complex social interactions is the main pressure for human intellectual development.
According to Haxby’s model of face encoding, you can divide a core system and an extended system:
Simulation theory: we understand others by simulating their states and executing their actions --> simulation in service of action understanding, or perhaps the other way around?
But how do we perceive action?
Ideomotor action: thought leads to action
How does the
........Read moreWe have this bias that smell is not important to us, probably because we find it hard to name them.
What’s remarkable about the smell brain autonomy?
Altruism: helping behavior that is considered selfless, there is no personal gain obtained and sometimes it is even costly to the helper.
What are the motives underlying helping?
What is a relationship? Just interaction is not enough. There has to be distress and longing in separation, and a sense of well-being in presence. Also known as social bonds.
Relationships have health benefits.
Love is the emotion associated with being in an attachment relationship.
Sternberg’s Triangular theory - love consists of
........Read moreSocial categorization is visible in task performance.
There is a racial bias.
The brain has an automatic conflict-detection system, located in the ACC. It signals us when we are in conflict situations that require attention. You see the effect of an error:
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