All college's NSBED - Neuroscience Of Social Behavior And Emotional Disorders (), ISBN: 9781138908628

Neuroscience of social behavior
and emotional disorders (NSBED)
HC1 – introduction and Methods
What is social neuroscience?
- Mix of sociology, social psychology and neuroscience

Sociology
- Study of social behavior or society
- We tend to be favorable to our own group and not to our out-group, which means everyone
is prejudiced

Social Psychology
- Study of (automatic) motivations of emotions of the brain regarding social activity

Neuroscience:
- Attempts to understand behavior by studying underlying brain regulators on
molecular/cellular level

Is there a ‘Social Brain’? (IMPORTANT QUESTION)
- Social brain is non-modular
 Social and non-social cognition rely on each other and evolve hand-in-hand
 In general: bigger brains lead to changes in both social and non-social intelligence
 Or maybe like this (social intelligence hypothesis)
 Pressure to outwit peers may lead to increased intelligence in (non)-social domains

Triune brain model (Maclean)
- According to this model the human brain is
an accumulation of brain regions that can be
roughly divided in three phylogenetic stages:
1. The reptilian brain (sub-cortex)
 Action-Reaction / fight-flight
2. The mammalian brain (limbic system)
 Emotionality: behavioral flexibility
3. The primate brain (neo-cortex)
 Rationality: behavior control
- Each ‘’newer’’ layer supports more complex
functions and exerts some sort of control
over the ‘’older’’ layers. (primate is newest,
reptilian is oldest)
 Als tijger voor je staat neemt het
reptielenbrein het over, maar als tijger
1000 meter ver weg staat dan handel je
naar je primate brain.
- This crosstalk however also means that a
large part of our behavior is still driven by

, similar brain mechanisms as our phylogenetic predecessors (bijv mensen met anxiety
disorder hebben een reptilian brain reactie op een trigger waar mensen normaal met een
primaat brein reactie op reageren
- Social brain is mostly non-modular
 Social and non-social cognition rely on each other and evolve hand-in-hand
 In general: bigger brains lead to changes in both social and non-social intelligence
 Or maybe like this (social intelligence hypothesis)
 Pressure to outwit peers may lead to increased intelligence in (non)-social domains
- Modularity per phylogenetic state:
1. Primate brain: non modular
 No precise brain area’s for social behavior, except for mirror neurons (more about this
later) which might play a role in social learning through observation
2. Mammalian brain (module-like)
 Amygdala/insula – fear/disgust
3. Reptilian brain (quite modular)
 Small nuclei with distinct (non)social roles

Mirror Neurons
- Neurons that respond to both self-behavior and other-behavior
- Thought to serve observational learning
- There may be comparable systems for emotion and sensation (e.g. pain) as well as action
- Not tightly localized to one region (so non modular!)

Conclusion P1:
- Some parts of social brain might be modular, module-like or nonmodular depending on
function
- In general, a network approach would be recommended instead of ascribing specific social
functions to brain regions

P2 Methods of Social Neuroscience
- 2 sides:
1. Psychological methods
2. Physiological methods

Psychological methods of SNS
- Subjective measures
 Emotional experience
 Personality questionnaires
- Observational measures
 Frequency of behaviors
- Performance measures
 Reaction time
 Accuracy

Subjective measures
- Emotional experience
 Interview/questionnaire to determine experience of individual
 POMS (profile of mood state)
- Personality Questionnaires

,  STAI/STAS (state-trait anxiety/anger)
 LSAS (Liebowitz social anxiety scare)
 EQ-SQ (empathy/systemizing)
 BIS/BAS (beh. Inhibiton/activation)
 & more
 ALL HIGHLY VALIDATED MEASURES!
- How to use in SNS
 Useful as control variable
 Useful as correlation with other measure
 Compare different studies

Observational Measures
- What will the participant do?
 Scoring and counting behaviors
 Animal studies
 Infant studies
 Camera (blinding, inter-rater reliability)
 Also: Eye-tracking

Performance measures
- Speed and accuracy
 Speed-accuracy trade-off
 Restricted, but ‘real’ behavior
 Stable because many measurements
- IQ test
- Emotion recognition test
- Selective attention
 Implicit association task
 (Gaze) cueing tasks
 Stroop to fear and anger
 Classical stroop: interference of word and color of word
 Emotional Stroop: interference of emotion associated
with the word
 Facial Fear Stroop: interference of expression
( participants with high trait angriness are slower at
naming the color after seeing angry face)

Measuring Psychophysiology
- Controlled by the brain through the spinal cord
- (Para)sympathetic nervous system
 Arousal

(Electro)physiological methods
- Goal
 Measure bodily reactions that underlie/precede (social) behavior
- Skin conductance (SCR)
 Sweat gland activity
- Heart rate, respiration
 Preparation for fight/flight

, - Electromyography (EMG)
 Muscle activity

Skin conductance resp. (SCR)
- Sweat glands related to sympathetic arousal
- Peak between 1-5s
- Can occur in absence of conscious perception

Heart rate
- Deceleration
 Preparing for danger
- Acceleration
 Active escape or attack
- Heart rate variability (HRV) (= of je hart ritmisch is of dat er tijdverschil zit tussen hartslagen)
 More variability = rest = parasympathetic
 Less = concentration, enhanced attention = Sympathetic

Electromyography (EMG)
- Measures potential between pairs of close electrodes
- Muscle activity
- Mimicking facial expressions (affective empathy)

Startle potentiation (also emg)
- Eye blink startle potentiation
- Measures orbicularis oculi (eye blinking) in non-threaten and threaten situations when a
startle signal is presented

P3 Brain Imaging
- Electrophysiology
 Single cell-recordings
 Electroencephalography (EEG)
- Structural imaging
 Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Diffusion Tensor imaging (DTI)
- Functional imaging
 Positron emission tomography (PET)
 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
- Lesion methods
 Neuropsychology
 Animal research
 Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Structure of the neuron
- All neuron same basic structure
 Dendrite
 Axon: transports action potentials
 Cell body