Gazing at me: the importance of social meaning in understanding direct-gaze cues

Hamilton, Antonia F. de C.

doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0080

Cited by 123 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Reviewing all these is beyond the scope of the current paper (Hamilton 2016; Senju and Johnson 2009) but the themes remain consistent. Across both gaze papers and audience papers, a common theme is that the sense of an audience is linked to activation in brain areas linked to mentalising and self-related processing, in particular mPFC, and also to reward areas (striatum) as well as other aspects of social cognition.…”

Section: Neural Mechanisms Of Audience Effectsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Audience effects: what can they tell us about social neuroscience, theory of mind and autism?

Hamilton

Lind

2016

Cult. Brain

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An audience effect arises when a person’s behaviour changes because they believe someone else is watching them. Though these effects have been known about for over 110 years, the cognitive mechanisms of the audience effect and how it might vary across different populations and cultures remains unclear. In this review, we examine the hypothesis that the audience effect draws on implicit mentalising abilities. Behavioural and neuroimaging data from a number of tasks are consistent with this hypothesis. We further review data suggest that how people respond to audiences may vary over development, personality factors, cultural background and clinical diagnosis including autism and anxiety disorder. Overall, understanding and exploring the audience effect may contribute to our models of social interaction, including reputation management and mentalising.

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Section: Neural Mechanisms Of Audience Effectsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Audience effects: what can they tell us about social neuroscience, theory of mind and autism?

Hamilton

Lind

2016

Cult. Brain

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“…However, in what situations an arousal/emotional response to eye contact occurs is currently unclear (Mormann et al , 2015; for a review, see Hamilton, 2016). We found no differences in average pupil diameter, which is considered a reliable measure of arousal (Libby et al , 1973; Kampe et al , 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural mechanisms of eye contact when listening to another person talking

Jiang

Borowiak

Tudge

et al. 2016

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

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Eye contact occurs frequently and voluntarily during face-to-face verbal communication. However, the neural mechanisms underlying eye contact when it is accompanied by spoken language remain unexplored to date. Here we used a novel approach, ﬁxation-based event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to simulate the listener making eye contact with a speaker during verbal communication. Participants’ eye movements and fMRI data were recorded simultaneously while they were freely viewing a pre-recorded speaker talking. The eye tracking data were then used to define events for the fMRI analyses. The results showed that eye contact in contrast to mouth fixation involved visual cortical areas (cuneus, calcarine sulcus), brain regions related to theory of mind/intentionality processing (temporoparietal junction, posterior superior temporal sulcus, medial prefrontal cortex) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In addition, increased effective connectivity was found between these regions for eye contact in contrast to mouth fixations. The results provide first evidence for neural mechanisms underlying eye contact when watching and listening to another person talking. The network we found might be well suited for processing the intentions of communication partners during eye contact in verbal communication.

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“…However, a single gaze may signal many meanings, and contextual integration is critical for correct understanding. Hence, it is not surprising that online gaze processing also consistently engages TPJ (and mPFC; [28,29], for reviews). Such findings are in line with a model of TPJ function which suggests that this brain area supports the integration of the vast array of intero-and exteroception information required by seemingly simple social interactions and situations.…”

Section: Self-other Distinction and Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

From shared to distinct self–other representations in empathy: evidence from neurotypical function and socio-cognitive disorders

Lamm

Bukowski

Silani

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

207

167

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One contribution of 16 to a theme issue 'Understanding self and other: from origins to disorders'. Neuroscientific research has identified two fundamental components of empathy: shared emotional representations between self and other, and self-other distinction. The concept of shared representations suggests that during empathy, we co-represent another person's affect by engaging brain and bodily functions underpinning the first-hand experience of the emotion we are empathizing with. This possible grounding of empathy in our own emotional experiences explains the necessity for self-other distinction, which is the capacity to correctly distinguish between our own affective representations and those related to the other. In spite of the importance of these two components in empathy, several aspects still remain controversial. This paper addresses some of them and focuses on (i) the distinction between shared activations versus representations, raising the question what shared representations entail in terms of the underlying neural mechanisms, (ii) the possible mechanisms behind self-other distinction in the cognitive and the affective domains, and whether they have distinct neural underpinnings and (iii) the consequences associated with a selective impairment of one of the two components, thereby addressing their importance in mental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders, psychopathy and alexithymia.

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Gazing at me: the importance of social meaning in understanding direct-gaze cues

Cited by 123 publications

References 76 publications

Audience effects: what can they tell us about social neuroscience, theory of mind and autism?

Audience effects: what can they tell us about social neuroscience, theory of mind and autism?

Neural mechanisms of eye contact when listening to another person talking

From shared to distinct self–other representations in empathy: evidence from neurotypical function and socio-cognitive disorders

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