Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than individualists. As a social species, Homo sapiens Humans are known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , and are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too survived to reproduce. The term "social neuroscience" can be traced to an article by John Cacioppo John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is on the Board of Directors of the Association for Psychological Science and in 2007 he was elected president. He founded and is Director of the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. He is a member of and Gary Berntson, published in the American Psychologist in 1992.^[1] Cacioppo and Berntson are considered as the legitimate fathers of social neuroscience. Still a young field, social neuroscience is closely related to affective neuroscience Affective neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood and cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychology and, focusing on how the brain mediates social interactions In social science, a social relation or social interaction refers to a relationship between two , three (i.e. a triad) or more individuals (e.g. a social group). Social relations, derived from individual agency, form the basis of the social structure. To this extent social relations are always the basic object of analysis for social scientists.

Overview

Traditional neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. Nevertheless, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that involves other disciplines such as psychology, computer science, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and medicine. As a result, the scope of neuroscience has has for many years considered the nervous system The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous system contains the brain, spinal cord, and retina as an isolated entity and largely ignored influences of the social environments in which humans and many animal species live. In fact, we now recognize the considerable impact of social structures on the operations of the brain and body. These social factors operate on the individual through a continuous interplay of neural, neuroendocrine, metabolic and immune factors on brain The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary and body With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death. The study of the workings of the body is physiology, in which the brain is the central regulatory organ and also a malleable target of these factors.^[2] Social neuroscience investigates the biological mechanisms that underlie social processes and behavior, widely considered one of the major problem areas for the neurosciences Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. Nevertheless, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that involves other disciplines such as psychology, computer science, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and medicine. As a result, the scope of neuroscience has in the 21st century, and applies concepts and methods of biology Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy to develop theories In the sciences, a scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about of social processes and behavior in the social and behavioral sciences The term behavioural sciences encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic experimental observations and rigorous formulations. (E. D. Klemke, R. Hollinger,. Social neuroscience capitalizes on biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social behavior, and it uses social and behavioral constructs and data to inform and refine theories of neural organization and function.^[3]

Throughout most of the 20th century, social and biological explanations were widely viewed as incompatible. But advances in recent years have led to the development of a new approach synthesized from the social and biological sciences. The new field of social neuroscience emphasizes the complementary relationship between the different levels of organization, spanning the social and biological domains (e.g., molecular, cellular, system, person, relational, collective, societal) and the use of multi-level analyses to foster understanding of the mechanisms underlying the human mind and behavior.

Methods

A number of methods are used in social neuroscience to investigate the confluence of neural The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous system contains the brain, spinal cord, and retina and social processes (drawing from behavioral techniques developed in social psychology Social psychology is the study of the relations between people and groups. Scholars in this interdisciplinary area are typically either psychologists or sociologists, though all social psychologists employ both the individual and the group as their units of analysis, cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of thought such as visual processing, memory, thinking, learning, feeling, problem solving, and language, and neuropsychology Neuropsychology is the basic scientific discipline that studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors. The term neuropsychology has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied to efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells in higher), associated with a variety of neurobiological techniques including Functional magnetic resonance imaging Functional MRI or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a type of specialized MRI scan. It measures the hemodynamic response (change in blood flow) related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging. Since the early 1990s, fMRI has come to dominate (fMRI), Transcranial magnetic stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive method to excite the elementary unit of the nervous system; neurons in the brain: weak electric currents are induced in the tissue by rapidly changing magnetic fields (electromagnetic induction). This way, brain activity can be triggered with minimal discomfort, and the functionality of the, Event-related potentials An event-related potential is any measured brain response that is directly the result of a thought or perception. More formally, it is any stereotyped electrophysiological response to an internal or external stimulus, Electrocardiograms Electrocardiography is a transthoracic interpretation of the electrical activity of the heart over time captured and externally recorded by skin electrodes. It is a noninvasive recording produced by an electrocardiographic device. The etymology of the word is derived from the Greek electro, because it is related to electrical activity, cardio,, Electromyograms, endocrinology Endocrinology is a branch of medicine dealing with disorder of the endocrine system and its specific secretions called hormones, the integration of developmental events such as proliferation, growth, and differentiation (including histogenesis and organogenesis) and the coordination of metabolism, respiration, excretion, movement, reproduction,, Galvanic skin response Galvanic skin response , also known as electrodermal response (EDR), psychogalvanic reflex (PGR), or skin conductance response (SCR), is a method of measuring the electrical resistance of the skin. There has been a long history of electrodermal activity research, most of it dealing with spontaneous fluctuations, and studies of Focal Brain Lesion Ataxia is a neurological sign and symptom that consists of gross lack of coordination of muscle movements. Ataxia is a non-specific clinical manifestation implying dysfunction of the parts of the nervous system that coordinate movement, such as the cerebellum. Several possible causes exist for these patterns of neurological dysfunction. The term & patients.^[4][5][6] Animal models are also important to investigate the putative role of specific brain structures, circuits, or processes (e.g., the reward system In neuroscience, the reward system is a collection of brain structures which attempts to regulate and control behavior by inducing pleasurable effects and drug addiction The related concept of drug addiction has many different definitions. Some writers give in fact drug addiction the same meaning as substance dependence, others for example provides drug addiction a narrower meaning which excludes drugs without evidence of tolerance or withdrawal symptoms). In addition, quantitative meta-analyses are important to move beyond idiosyncrasies of individual studies, and neurodevelopmental investigations can contribute to our understanding of brain-behavior associations.^[7][8]

Society for social neuroscience

A dinner to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the interdisciplinary field of social neuroscience at the Society for Neuroscience The Society for Neuroscience is a professional society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., for basic scientists and physicians around the world whose research is focused on the study of the brain and nervous system meeting (Chicago Chicago ( /ʃɨˈkɑːɡoʊ/ or /ʃɨˈkɔːɡoʊ/) is the largest city in both Illinois and the Midwest, and the third most populous city in the United States, with over 2.8 million living within the city limits. Its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland", is the 26th most populous in the world, home to an estimated 9.7 million, November 2009) resulted in a series of meetings led by John Cacioppo John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is on the Board of Directors of the Association for Psychological Science and in 2007 he was elected president. He founded and is Director of the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. He is a member of and Jean Decety Jean Decety is a neuroscientist and an internationally recognized expert on cognitive neuroscience and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, particularly empathy, sympathy, emotional self-regulation and more generally interpersonal processes. He is Irving B. Harris Professor at with social neuroscientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and neurologists in Argentina, Australia, Chile, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States. It was noted that, as a social species, humans create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and international alliances. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped humans survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too survived to reproduce, thereby ensuring their genetic legacy. Social neuroscience was defined broadly as the interdisciplinary study of the neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic mechanisms underlying the emergent structures that define social species. Thus, among the participants in these meetings were scientists who used a wide variety of methods in studies of animals as well as humans and patients as well as normal participants. The consensus also emerged that a Society for Social Neuroscience should be established to give scientists from diverse disciplines and perspectives the opportunity to meet, communicate with, and benefit from the work of each other. The international, interdisciplinary Society for social neuroscience (http://S4SN.org) was launched at the conclusion of these consultations in Auckland The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with a population approaching 1.4 million residents, 31 percent of the country's population. Demographic trends indicate that it will continue to grow faster than the rest of the country. Increasingly cosmopolitan,, New Zealand New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori language name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. The Realm of New Zealand also on 20 January 2010, and the inaugural meeting for the Society was specified as the day prior to the 2010 Society for Neuroscience meeting (San Diego, CA).

See also

Social Neuroscience Journals

• Social Neuroscience Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than individualists. As a social species, Homo - Social Neuroscience, the first journal dedicated to social neuroscience, inaugural issue published March 2006.
• Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, inaugural issue published June 2006.
• The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is a monthly psychology journal of the American Psychological Association. It is considered one of the top journals in the fields of social and personality psychology. Its focus is on empirical research reports; however, specialized theoretical, methodological, and review papers are also published (JPSP) published a special section on Social Neuroscience in the October 2003 issue.
• Neuropsychologia published a special issue on social neuroscience in 2003.
• The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience publishes occasional articles on Social Neuroscience, including a special issue on Social Neuroscience in December 2004.
• NeuroImage published a Special Section on Social Cognitive Neuroscience in the December 2005 issue.
• Psychophysiology has published several articles dealing with Social Neuroscience.
• Biological Psychology regularly publishes social neuroscience work.

Key readings

• Brune, M., Ribbert, H., & Schiefenhovel, W. (2003). The social brain: evolution and pathology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons Ltd.
• Cacioppo, J.T. (2002). Social neuroscience: Understanding the pieces fosters understanding the whole and vice versa. American Psychologist, 57, 819-831.
• Cacioppo, J. T., & Berntson, G. G. (1992). Social psychological contributions to the decade of the brain: Doctrine of multilevel analysis. American Psychologist, 47, 1019-1028.
• Cacioppo, J.T., Berntson, G.G., Sheridan, J.F., & McClintock, M.K. (2000). Multilevel integrative analyses of human behavior: social neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological approaches. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 829-843.
• Cacioppo, John T.; Gary G. Berntson (2004). Social Neuroscience: Key Readings,. Psychology Press. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 978-1-84169-099-5. .
• Cacioppo, John T.; Penny S. Visser, Cynthia L. Pickett (eds.) (2005). Social Neuroscience: People Thinking about Thinking People. MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-262-03335-6. .
• Cozolino, L. (2006). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment And the Developing Social Brain. W. W. Norton & Company.
• de Haan, M., & Gunnar, M.R. (2009). Handbook of Developmental Social Neuroscience. The Guilford Press.
• Decety, J., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2010). Handbook of Social Neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Decety, J., & Ickes, W. (2009). The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT press.
• Emery, N.J. (2007). Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Behavior. Taylor & Francis.
• Harmon-Jones, E.; P. Winkielman (2007). Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior. Guilford Press. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 978-1-59385-404-1. .
• van Lange, P.A.M. (2006). Bridging social psychology: benefits of transdisciplinary Approaches. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Wolpert, D. & Frith, C. (2004). The Neuroscience of Social Interactions: Decoding, Influencing, and Imitating the Actions of Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

1. ^ Cacioppo, J. T., & Berntson, G. G. (1992). Social psychological contributions to the decade of the brain: Doctrine of multilevel analysis. American Psychologist, 47, 1019-1028.
2. ^ Cacioppo, J. T., Berntson, G. G., & Decety, J. (in press). A history of social neuroscience. In A. W. Kruglanski and W. Stroebe (Eds.), Handbook of the History of Social Psychology. New York: Psychology Press.
3. ^ Cacioppo, J.T. et al. (2007). Social neuroscience: progress and implications for mental health. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 99-123.
4. ^ Adolphs, R. (2003). Investigating the cognitive neuroscience of social behavior. Neuropsychologia, 41, 119-126.
5. ^ Cacioppo, J.T., & Berntson, G.G. (2009), Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral Science. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
6. ^ Harmon-Jones, E., & Beer, J.S. (2009). Methods in Social Neuroscience. New York: The Guilford Press
7. ^ de Haan, M., & Gunnar, M.R. (2009). Handbook of Developmental Social Neuroscience. The Guilford Press.
8. ^ Decety, J., & Cacioppo, T.T. (in press). Frontiers in human neuroscience, the golden triangle, and beyond. Perspectives on Psychological Science.

External links

• Society for Social Neuroscience.
• University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience.
• "What is social neuroscience?" Introduction from the first issue (March 2006) of the journal Social Neuroscience defining social neuroscience, listing the tools of social neuroscience, and addressing the impact of social neuroscience.

Categories: Neuroscience Neuroscience is a field of study which deals with the structure, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology and pathology of the nervous system | Biopsychology | Cognitive neuroscience | Neuropsychology | Psychology | Social sciences | Cognitive science | Branches of psychology | Social psychology

See Also:

• Social Defeat: Encyclopedia
• Social Science: Encyclopedia
• Social Rejection: Encyclopedia
• Science: Social Sciences: Political Science: Foreign Policy: Directory
• Science: Social Sciences: Political Science: International Relations: Directory

What Links Here:

Recently Viewed Pages:

• Society: Military: Veterans: Vietnam War: Chats and Forums: Directory
• NATO: Blogs
• Arts: Blogs
• Society: Military: Veterans: Chats and Forums: Directory
• Estradiol: Blogs
• Society: Military: Veterans: Vietnam War: Chats and Forums
• Submarines: Blogs
• Home
• Society: Issues: Warfare and Conflict: Directory
• Society: Issues: Government Operations: Conscription: Directory

Most Popular Pages:

• Home
• Social Rejection: Blogs
• Arts: Blogs
• Chats and Forums: Shopping
• Submarines: Blogs
• Society: Military: Veterans: Chats and Forums: Directory
• NATO: Blogs
• Estradiol: Blogs
• Society: Military: Veterans: Vietnam War: Chats and Forums: Directory (200 Ok) ACCEPTED
• Social Neuroscience: Shopping Search

Related 'Social Neuroscience' Searches: