An evolutionarily adaptive neural architecture for social reasoning

doi:10.1016/j.tins.2009.09.001

Trends in Neurosciences

Volume 32, Issue 12, December 2009, Pages 603-610

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2009.09.001 Get rights and content

Recent progress in cognitive neuroscience highlights the involvement of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in social cognition. Accumulating evidence demonstrates that representations within the lateral PFC enable people to coordinate their thoughts and actions with their intentions to support goal-directed social behavior. Despite the importance of this region in guiding social interactions, remarkably little is known about the functional organization and forms of social inference processed by the lateral PFC. Here, we introduce a cognitive neuroscience framework for understanding the inferential architecture of the lateral PFC, drawing upon recent theoretical developments in evolutionary psychology and emerging neuroscience evidence about how this region can orchestrate behavior on the basis of evolutionarily adaptive social norms for obligatory, prohibited and permissible courses of action.

Section snippets

Architect of the social mind

Evolution has fundamentally shaped the architecture of the mind, producing cognitive and neural mechanisms that are designed to solve adaptive problems encountered by our human ancestors. Throughout evolutionary history, a foremost adaptive challenge for our species was living and interacting with people – learning to select mates, form alliances and compete for limited resources. Our human ancestors also needed to obey social norms and standard of conduct, as violations of these rules might

Evolutionary foundations of normative social behavior

Evolutionary psychology has made significant progress in understanding the evolutionary origins of normative social behavior, establishing the central role of social exchange in the formation of cooperative human societies. Social exchange promotes the survival of individuals who cooperate for mutual benefit – one providing a benefit to another, conditional on the recipient's providing a benefit in return (for representative findings from behavioral economics, see Refs 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29).

Simulation theory of prefrontal cortex function

One of the great mysteries of brain function concerns how coordinated, purposeful behavior arises from neural states. How are people able to orchestrate their thoughts and actions in concert with their intentions to support goal-directed social behavior? An emerging body of evidence suggests that this capacity centrally depends on the PFC, which is particularly important for grouping specific experiences of our interactions with the environment along common themes, that is, as behavior-guiding

Inferential architecture of the lateral prefrontal cortex

We review a broad range of evidence from the social and decision neuroscience literatures demonstrating (i) the involvement of vlPFC when reasoning about necessary (obligatory or prohibited) courses of action; (ii) the recruitment of dlPFC for drawing inferences about possible (permissible) states of affairs; and (iii) activation in alPFC for higher-order inferences that incorporate both categories of knowledge (Figure 2). The simulation architecture underlying these forms of inference further

Toward an integrative theory of human inference, value and belief

We have reviewed converging lines of evidence to support an evolutionarily adaptive neural architecture for social reasoning within the lateral PFC, drawing upon recent theoretical developments in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience studies investigating the biology, evolution, ontogeny and cognitive functions of this region. We have surveyed a broad range of social and decision neuroscience data demonstrating that the lateral PFC mediates behavior-guiding principles for specific classes

Acknowledgement

The authors are supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. We are grateful to Lawrence W. Barsalou, Denise Cummins, Amita Srivastava and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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Furthermore, PFC has been shown to undergo greater expansion at the gross anatomy level in human evolutionary lineage than other brain regions [8]; it is the brain region that has emerged and evolved most recently during primate evolution. PFC is involved in complex cognitive functions including reasoning, planning, social behavior, and general intelligence [9–11]. Cognitive abilities decline during aging.
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Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Trends in Neurosciences

ReviewAn evolutionarily adaptive neural architecture for social reasoning

Section snippets

Architect of the social mind

Evolutionary foundations of normative social behavior

Simulation theory of prefrontal cortex function

Inferential architecture of the lateral prefrontal cortex

Toward an integrative theory of human inference, value and belief

Acknowledgement

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Neuroimage

Neuropsychologia

Neuron

Neuron

Neuroimage

Behav. Brain Res.

Cognition

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

Cogn. Psychol.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Cognition

Arch. Gerontol. Geriatr.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Neuroimage

Brain Res.

Neuroimage

Cognition

Cortex

Neuron

Neuron

Neuroimage

Neuropsychologia

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Neuroimage

Neuroimage

Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

Structured event complexes in the medial prefrontal cortex support counterfactual representations for future planning

Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

Structured event complexes and mental models for counterfactual inference

An fMRI study of intentional and unintentional (embarrassing) violations of social norms

Brain

Emotion-related learning in patients with social and emotional changes associated with frontal lobe damage

J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry

Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex

Cereb. Cortex

Working memory for social cues recruits orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of delayed matching to sample for emotional expressions

J. Neurosci.

How would you feel versus how do you think she would feel? A neuroimaging study of perspective-taking with social emotions

J. Cogn. Neurosci.

Review
An evolutionarily adaptive neural architecture for social reasoning