Live Lecture: Social Neuroscience Overview
1. Multidisciplinary Approach:
- Sociology, psychology, neuroscience
- Martin Luther King's quote emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives to understand prejudice.
2. Sociology:
- Study of social behavior, origins, development, organizations, networks, and institutions.
- Recognition of in-group favoritism and inherent prejudice.
3. (Social) Psychology:
- Explores individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
- Examines phenomena like dehumanization to understand motivations and emotions underlying prejudice.
4. Neuroscience:
- Studies behavior by examining brain circuitry.
- Example: Oxytocin's role in bonding but also potential for reinforcing racist stereotypes.
- Social neuroscience aims to integrate biology, individual psychology, and group sociology.
5. The Social Brain: Modular or Non-Modular?
- Discussion on whether the social brain functions through specialized routines or a more integrated, non-modular approach.
- Consideration of the triune brain model, highlighting reptilian, mammalian, and primate brain components.
6. Evolution and the Triune Brain:
- Bigger brains influencing both social and non-social intelligence.
- Social intelligence hypothesis: Pressure to outwit peers leading to increased intelligence in non-social domains.
- Social and non-social cognition interdependent.
7. Brain Evolution:
- Triune brain model overview, highlighting reptilian, mammalian, and primate brain structures.
- Mirror neurons as a social mechanism for observational learning.
8. Mixed Mode of the Social Brain:
- Parts may be modular, module-like, or non-modular, depending on specific functions.
- Advocacy for a network approach rather than assigning discrete social functions to specific brain regions.
9. Electrical Connections and Neuromodulators:
- Action potentials for motion, more diffuse for emotion.
- Role of neurotransmitters (glutamate, GABA) and neuromodulators (norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine) in emotion.
10. Autonomous Nervous System:
- Rest and digest vs. fight or flight balance.
- Hypothalamus regulation and its connection to emotional states.
11. Motivation and Emotion:
- Distinction between motivation (reward seeking and punishment avoidance) and emotion.
- Approach/avoidance actions and subjective liking/disliking.
12. Theories of Emotion:
- James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Papez and Maclean, and Schachter & Singer models.
- Body and brain connection in emotional states.
13. Basic and Complex Emotions:
- Exploration of basic emotions (fear, happy) across cultures.
- Evolutionary perspective on emotions with dedicated neural substrates.
- Introduction of complex social emotions like guilt, pride, and jealousy.
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