Social cognition and the brain: a meta-analysis

Abstract

This meta-analysis explores the location and function of brain areas involved in social cognition, or the capacity to understand people's behavioral intentions, social beliefs, and personality traits. On the basis of over 200 fMRI studies, it tests alternative theoretical proposals that attempt to explain how several brain areas process information relevant for social cognition. The results suggest that inferring temporary states such as goals, intentions, and desires of other people-even when they are false and unjust from our own perspective--strongly engages the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Inferring more enduring dispositions of others and the self, or interpersonal norms and scripts, engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), although temporal states can also activate the mPFC. Other candidate tasks reflecting general-purpose brain processes that may potentially subserve social cognition are briefly reviewed, such as sequence learning, causality detection, emotion processing, and executive functioning (action monitoring, attention, dual task monitoring, episodic memory retrieval), but none of them overlaps uniquely with the regions activated during social cognition. Hence, it appears that social cognition particularly engages the TPJ and mPFC regions. The available evidence is consistent with the role of a TPJ-related mirror system for inferring temporary goals and intentions at a relatively perceptual level of representation, and the mPFC as a module that integrates social information across time and allows reflection and representation of traits and norms, and presumably also of intentionality, at a more abstract cognitive level.

Figure 1

[A,B] The anatomy of the human brain, and the major areas involved in social cognition, placed in x‐y‐z stereotactic atlas. Left‐right (not shown) reflects the anatomical x‐axis, posterior‐anterior at the bottom reflects the anatomical y‐axis, and inferior‐superior (or ventral‐dorsal) on the left reflects the anatomical z‐axis. [C] The mirror system: Visual input in the STS is propagated to the TPJ/IPL, and further to the PMC where it is compared with own action schemas and associated goals. The matched goal behind the action detected at the PMC is sent back to the TPJ/IPL (for goal identification) and STS (for agency identification). [D] How a human, its body (parts), movements and name are represented in the brain in the FFA (Fusiform Face Area), OFA (Occipital Face Area), EBA (Extrastriate Body Area), STS (Superior Temporal Sulcus) and the anterior Temporal Pole, and how the mirror system is recruited for observing (posterior areas) and executing (anterior areas) movements of mouth/face [+], hand/arm [□] or foot [×]. [E,F] The TPJ involved in social inferences of intentionality and traits; right and left lateral view, respectively. The studies involved in D‐F can be identified via the y‐z coordinates in Table I.

Figure 2

[A] The mPFC involved in social inferences of intentionality. [B] The mPFC involved in social inferences of traits (other and self) and scripts. Social inferences during interpersonal games are included in the trait inferences of others. [C] The mPFC involved in sequence learning and emotional responses. [D] The medial PFC involved in executive functions, in comparison with social inferences of traits and scripts (copied from Fig. 2B). [E,F] The lateral PFC involved in causal learning and executive functions; right and left lateral view, respectively. The studies involved in A‐F can be identified via the y‐z coordinates in Table I.