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The social brain: allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been
Open accessAbstract
The biological basis of complex human social interaction and communication has been illuminated through a coming together of various methods and disciplines. Among these are comparative studies of other species, studies of disorders of social cognition and developmental psychology. The use of neuroimaging and computational models has given weight to speculations about the evolution of social behaviour and culture in human societies. We highlight some networks of the social brain relevant to two-person interactions and consider the social signals between interacting partners that activate these networks. We make a case for distinguishing between signals that automatically trigger interaction and cooperation and ostensive signals that are used deliberately. We suggest that this ostensive signalling is needed for ‘closing the loop’ in two-person interactions, where the partners each know that they have the intention to communicate. The use of deliberate social signals can serve to increase reputation and trust and facilitates teaching. This is likely to be a critical factor in the steep cultural ascent of mankind.
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“Intriguingly, these four seemingly disparate psychological categories summarize what sets humans probably apart from non-human primates (Tomasello 2001; Frith and Frith 2010).”
From Parsing the neural correlates of moral cognition: ALE meta-analysis on morality, theory of mind, and empathy (2012) · cites this paper as Frith and Frith 2010
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“We have speculated that anterior rostral medial prefrontal cortex (arMPFC), in which activity is elicited by many mentalizing tasks, may have a critical role in the special kind of representation that closes the loop between minds (Amodio & Frith 2006).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Frith, U., & Frith, C.
- Affiliations
- ICN, UCL, 17 Queen Square, London, UK
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
- ORCID
- Frith, Chris
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2010-01-12
- Volume
- 365
- Issue
- 1537
- Pages
- 165-176
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC2842701
- OpenAlex
- W2124884997
- Cited by
- 443
- References
- 104
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 24 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 49 · 2013: 42 · 2012: 34
- FWCI
- 38.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Research Foundation
- Danmarks Grundforskningsfond
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Keywords
- social brain, social cognition, social communication, two-person interaction, cooperation, reputation, trust, teaching, cultural evolution, evolution of social behavior, social brain network
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Cognition, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Nerve Net, Social Behavior
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