Social concepts such as ''tactless'' or ''honorable'' enable us to describe our own as well as others' social behaviors. The prevailing view is that this abstract social semantic knowledge is mainly subserved by the same medial prefrontal regions that are considered essential for mental state attribution and self-reflection. Nevertheless, neurodegeneration of the anterior temporal cortex typically leads to impairments of social behavior as well as general conceptual knowledge. By using functional MRI, we demonstrate that the anterior temporal lobe represents abstract social semantic knowledge in agreement with this patient evidence. The bilateral superior anterior temporal lobes (Brodmann's area 38) are selectively activated when participants judge the meaning relatedness of social concepts (e.g., honor-brave) as compared with concepts describing general animal functions (e.g., nutritious-useful). Remarkably, only activity in the superior anterior temporal cortex, but not the medial prefrontal cortex, correlates with the richness of detail with which social concepts describe social behavior. Furthermore, this anterior temporal lobe activation is independent of emotional valence, whereas medial prefrontal regions show enhanced activation for positive social concepts. Our results demonstrate that the superior anterior temporal cortex plays a key role in social cognition by providing abstract conceptual knowledge of social behaviors. We further speculate that these abstract conceptual representations can be associated with different contexts of social actions and emotions through integration with frontolimbic circuits to enable flexible evaluations of social behavior.functional MRI ͉ semantics ͉ social cognition ͉ temporal lobe ͉ frontal lobe ''

Social values are composed of social concepts (e.g., "generosity") and context-dependent moral sentiments (e.g., "pride"). The neural basis of this intricate cognitive architecture has not been investigated thus far. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects imagined their own actions toward another person (self-agency) which either conformed or were counter to a social value and were associated with pride or guilt, respectively. Imagined actions of another person toward the subjects (other-agency) in accordance with or counter to a value were associated with gratitude or indignation/anger. As hypothesized, superior anterior temporal lobe (aTL) activity increased with conceptual detail in all conditions. During self-agency, activity in the anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlated with pride and guilt, whereas activity in the subgenual cingulate solely correlated with guilt. In contrast, indignation/anger activated lateral orbitofrontal-insular cortices. Pride and gratitude additionally evoked mesolimbic and basal forebrain activations. Our results demonstrate that social values emerge from coactivation of stable abstract social conceptual representations in the superior aTL and context-dependent moral sentiments encoded in fronto-mesolimbic regions. This neural architecture may provide the basis of our ability to communicate about the meaning of social values across cultural contexts without limiting our flexibility to adapt their emotional interpretation.

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The human brain is inherently able to understand the world in moral ways, endowing most of us with an intuitive sense of fairness, concern for others, and observance of cultural norms. We have argued that this moral sensitivity ability depends on a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms, which are modulated by individual experience in different cultural milieus. Different lines of investigation on agency and morality have pointed to overlapping neural systems. Therefore, understanding the relationships between morality and agency may provide key insights into the mechanisms underlying human behavior in several clinical and societal settings. We used functional MRI to investigate the contribution of agency and of specific moral emotions to brain activation using action scripts. Results showed that emotionally neutral agency recruited neural networks previously associated with agency, intentionality and moral cognition, encompassing ventral and subgenual sectors of the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), insula, anterior temporal cortex and superior temporal sulcus (STS). Compared to emotionally neutral agency, different categories of moral emotions led to distinct activation patterns: (1) prosocial emotions (guilt, embarrassment, compassion) activated the anterior medial PFC and STS, with (2) empathic emotions (guilt and compassion) additionally recruiting the mesolimbic pathway; (3) other-critical emotions (disgust and indignation) were associated with activation of the amygdala-parahippocampal and fusiform areas. These findings indicate that agency related to norm-abiding social behaviors of emotionally neutral scripts share neural substrates both with the "default mode" of brain function and with the moral sensitivity network. Additional activation in specific components of this network is elicited by different classes of moral emotions, in agreement with recent integrative models of moral cognition and emotion.

Adults with HF have worse immediate and long-term memory and psychomotor speed than controls without IHD. Heart failure is associated with changes in brain regions that are important for demanding cognitive and emotional processing.

Male bonnet monkeys (Macaca radiata) were subjected to the Variable Foraging Demand (VFD) early stress paradigm as infants, MRI scans were completed an average of four years later, and behavioral assessments of anxiety and ex-vivo corpus callosum (CC) measurements were made when animals were fully matured. VFD rearing was associated with smaller CC size, CC measurements were found to correlate with fearful behavior in adulthood, and ex-vivo CC assessments showed high consistency with earlier MRI measures. Region of Interest (ROI) hippocampus and whole brain voxel- based morphometry assessments were also completed and VFD rearing was associated with reduced hippocampus and inferior and middle temporal gyri volumes. Animals were also characterized according to serotonin transporter genotype (5-HTTLPR), and the effect of genotype on imaging parameters was explored. The current findings highlight the importance of future research to better understand the effects of stress on brain development in multiple regions, including the corpus callosum, hippocampus, and other regions involved in emotion processing. Nonhuman primates provide a powerful model to unravel the mechanisms by which early stress and genetic makeup interact to produce long-term changes in brain development, stress reactivity, and risk for psychiatric disorders.

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Recent fMRI studies linked subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC) activity with feelings of guilt for acting counter to social values and altruistic donations towards societal causes. We hypothesized that SCC activity across those different tasks was driven by feelings of attachment. In order to investigate this further, we used fMRI to probe the association of empathic concern and strength of SCC activation in response to guilt- and compassion-evoking verbal descriptions of social behaviour. We were able to confirm our prediction that participants with higher empathic concern had increased activity in the SCC in the guilt condition, whereas there was no association for compassion. These results shed new light on the role of the SCC which shows abnormalities in clinical depression.