Seven Computations of the Social Brain

Tanaz Molapour, Cindy C Hagan, Brian Silston, Haiyan Wu, Maxwell Ramstead, Karl Friston, Dean Mobbs
2021 Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience  
The social environment presents the human brain with the most complex of information processing demands. The computations that the brain must perform occur in parallel, combine social and nonsocial cues, produce verbal and non-verbal signals, and involve multiple cognitive systems; including memory, attention, emotion, learning. This occurs dynamically and at timescales ranging from milliseconds to years. Here, we propose that during social interactions, seven core operations interact to
more » ... ite coherent social functioning; these operations accumulate evidence efficiently - from multiple modalities - when inferring what to do next. We deconstruct the social brain and outline the key components entailed for successful human social interaction. These include (1) social perception; (2) social inferences, such as mentalizing; (3) social learning; (4) social signaling through verbal and non-verbal cues; (5) social drives (e.g., how to increase one's status); (6) determining the social identity of agents, including oneself; and (7) minimizing uncertainty within the current social context by integrating sensory signals and inferences. We argue that while it is important to examine these distinct aspects of social inference, to understand the true nature of the human social brain, we must also explain how the brain integrates information from the social world.
doi:10.1093/scan/nsab024 pmid:33629102 pmcid:PMC8343565 fatcat:tzzaehhhfbfirbddtd36e5udey