The growing interest in the mechanisms determining the social functioning of human beings has raised the challenge of obtaining an accurate concept of social cognition and its related mechanisms, because several neurologic and psychiatric diseases exhibit related impairments since earliest stages. Social Cognition is defined as the integration of mental processes allowing the interaction among subjects and it includes phenomena as Social Perception, Theory of Mind and Empathy (or the affective response to the mental state of other people). In this article, as the primary aim, we expose the main concepts and neural basis in order to make easier the first approach for those who are looking for an application in the research with clinical populations.
Consciousness constitutes a complex concept. Its clinical and phenomenological definitions are commonly under debate. Resting-State functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has contributed to the understanding of different cognitive processes by providing neural mechanisms underlying specific functions. Resting State acquisitions has shown an important role of Resting State networks both in different mental state and consciousness alterations as those disorders of consciousness observed in neurological pathologies and specific states as drug-induced hallucinations and traumatic brain injury. This evidence situates the complex focus of this article, the consciousness, as an accurate balance between activity and connectivity of regions and neural networks.
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