Topic
Social brain research, explained
8 open-access social brain studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- How Dementia Types Differ in Reading Faces and Minds
Different forms of frontotemporal dementia experience social thinking deficits due to different underlying brain damage patterns.
- How the brain combines our opinions with online reviews
The human brain updates personal judgments using social advice by weighting both opinions according to how certain they are.
- Does turning down orexin make stressed rats resilient?
Rats that actively coped with social defeat had lower prepro-orexin mRNA; inhibiting lateral-hypothalamic orexin neurons with DREADDs on days 6–8 boosted social interaction and reduced forced-swim immobility in previously passive, vulnerable rats.
- How quickly does the brain process speech acts?
The brain processes the social purpose of a word within 120 milliseconds of hearing it, at the same time it decodes the word's literal meaning.
- How does the brain produce internal conversations?
Silent internal conversations recruit brain areas involved in understanding others' minds alongside traditional language regions, unlike simple internal monologues.
- Do autistic adults' brains track others' beliefs differently?
A key 'mind-reading' brain area, the right temporoparietal junction, responded less to another character's false belief in autistic adults than in controls, even though their task behaviour looked the same.
- How are empathy and anxiety connected in the brain?
Empathy and anxiety are not directly linked, but instead connect through a shared tendency to worry and ruminate, which shows up as prolonged brain activity in emotional processing networks.
- How does our brain make us conform to our peer group?
Conforming to our social group triggers reward and perspective-taking regions in the brain, suggesting that following peers is inherently satisfying and socially driven.