Social Attention and the Brain

Klein, Jeffrey T.; Shepherd, Stephen V.; Platt, Michael L.

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.010

Cited by 148 publications

(126 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(57 reference statements)

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“…Tracking group members' status serves vital functions supported by valuation regions, such as assigning motivational importance to particular individuals, monitoring and detecting their presence, and signaling they deserve privileged status in attention and decision-making (17,(19)(20)(21)(22). In an experimental demonstration of this principle, rhesus macaques were willing to sacrifice fruit juice to view faces of high-status group members, while requiring overpayment of juice to view low-status monkeys' faces (38).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In an experimental demonstration of this principle, rhesus macaques were willing to sacrifice fruit juice to view faces of high-status group members, while requiring overpayment of juice to view low-status monkeys' faces (38). Given the valuation system's critical role in reward processing and reinforcement learning (13), this mechanism may also provide intrinsically rewarding reinforcement that motivates proximity and preferential attention to popular individuals as well as incentivizing interactions with them (5,6,8,12,22). At the group-level, this neural mechanism may help stabilize social networks over time, thereby contributing to the self-reinforcing nature of social status and hence the reproduction of social structure (39).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The observed correlations between target popularity and activity in valuation and social cognition regions confirmed our primary hypotheses, which led to our second question: Do the two systems track popularity in parallel (independently) or serially, with one system assuming a primary role that mediates the popularity-activity relationship for the other? We predicted the valuation system would function as mediator based on the aforementioned literatures in social psychology [i.e., it is highstatus individuals' social importance that motivates others to predict their mental states (25)(26)(27)(28)] and nonhuman primate neurophysiology [i.e., neurons in valuation regions encode social value and signal presence of high-status group members (19)(20)(21)(22)]. To test this prediction, we performed multilevel mediation analyses, assessing whether valuation system activity explains the observed relationship between target popularity and social cognition system activity.…”

Section: And Person Judgment Tasks (See Ref 23 For Review)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These densely interconnected regions (13), henceforth referred to collectively as the "valuation system," are consistently implicated in processing the affective value and motivational significance of various stimuli, including other people (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). Although human neuroscience research has yet to investigate sociometric popularity, nonhuman primate researchers have found that neurons in these regions signal group members' dominance rank (19)(20)(21) and proposed that the vmPFC, VS, and amygdala interact to encode, monitor, and signal other individuals' social value (22). If tracking group members' popularity depends on the motivational significance…”

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confidence: 99%

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Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks

Zerubavel

Bearman

Weber

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

102

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Differences in popularity are a key aspect of status in virtually all human groups and shape social interactions within them. Little is known, however, about how we track and neurally represent others' popularity. We addressed this question in two real-world social networks using sociometric methods to quantify popularity. Each group member (perceiver) viewed faces of every other group member (target) while whole-brain functional MRI data were collected. Independent functional localizer tasks were used to identify brain systems supporting affective valuation (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, amygdala) and social cognition (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, temporoparietal junction), respectively. During the face-viewing task, activity in both types of neural systems tracked targets' sociometric popularity, even when controlling for potential confounds. The target popularity-social cognition system relationship was mediated by valuation system activity, suggesting that observing popular individuals elicits value signals that facilitate understanding their mental states. The target popularity-valuation system relationship was strongest for popular perceivers, suggesting enhanced sensitivity to differences among other group members' popularity. Popular group members also demonstrated greater interpersonal sensitivity by more accurately predicting how their own personalities were perceived by other individuals in the social network. These data offer insights into the mechanisms by which status guides social behavior.social status | fMRI | social network | popularity | social cognition

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: And Person Judgment Tasks (See Ref 23 For Review)mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks

Zerubavel

Bearman

Weber

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

102

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“…Together, these findings suggest that a circuit connecting STS, amygdala and LIP subserves rapid, reflexive gaze-following in nonhuman primates. Moreover, this circuit appears to have become further elaborated during human evolution to support joint attention and ToM [104].…”

Section: Cognitive and Neural Boundaries Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. Studies of the factors affecting reproductive success in group-living monkeys have traditionally focused on competitive traits, like the acquisition of high dominance rank. Recent research, however, indicates that the ability to form cooperative social bonds has an equally strong effect on fitness. Two implications follow. First, strong social bonds make individuals' fitness interdependent and the 'free-rider' problem disappears. Second, individuals must make adaptive choices that balance competition and cooperation-often with the same partners. The proximate mechanisms underlying these behaviours are only just beginning to be understood. Recent results from cognitive and systems neuroscience provide us some evidence that many social and nonsocial decisions are mediated ultimately by abstract, domain-general neural mechanisms. However, other populations of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, amygdala and parietal cortex specifically encode the type, importance and value of social information. Whether these specialized populations of neurons arise by selection or through developmental plasticity in response to the challenges of social life remains unknown. Many brain areas are homologous and show similar patterns of activity in human and nonhuman primates. In both groups, cortical activity is modulated by hormones like oxytocin and by the action of certain genes that may affect individual differences in behaviour. Taken together, results suggest that differences in cooperation between the two groups are a matter of degree rather than constituting a fundamental, qualitative distinction.

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Social Attention

Bourjade

2017

The International Encyclopedia of Primatology

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Social attention refers to the orientation of individuals' activity towards social stimuli, and operates both as a selective perception of those stimuli and as a priming for action. The two main acceptances of the concept are, for individuals A and B: (1) A pays attention to any feature of B, and (2) A specifically attends to B's direction of attention. Nonhuman primates can detect the direction of others' attention based on different cues such as the line of gaze and the orientation of the head and the body. Once detected, the direction of another's attention induces a shift in the individual's own attention; A follows B's line of gaze. Gaze following occurs when A follows B's line of gaze in space, and joint attention when A focuses on the same external object as B. The extent to which social attention is under voluntary control is still under debate.

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Social Attention and the Brain

Cited by 148 publications

References 42 publications

Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks

Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Social Attention

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