The Neural Basis and Representation of Social Attributions.

This chapter reviews several aspects of the neural underpinnings of social mentalizing, by asking several key questions. First, do we have control over our social judgments? Our findings suggest that implicit (and spontaneous) versus explicit (and controlled) processes are supported by the same core mentalizing network. Stronger activations during explicit mentalizing probably reflect validation processes of the initial and quick implicit inference. Second, how do we access our social knowledge? We found some evidence for the suggestion that one of the mentalizing key brain areas, the temporo-parietal junction is involved in this process. The idea is that this area directs one's attention to one's internal memory on social behaviors, and once recalled together with general social knowledge, this knowledge allows to make appropriate social attributions. Third, where in the brain is social information stored, especially about persons and their traits? Our research documented that another key mentalizing brain area, the medial prefrontal cortex, encodes and represents much of our social knowledge on persons and traits. This area might be considered a hub or convergence zone of social information processing in which traits and agents represent high-level abstract summaries that integrate information on actions and behaviors at lower levels of the hierarchy in other mentalizing areas. Finally, what is the role of the cerebellum in social cognition? Novel research suggests that it primarily builds internal models of action sequences which allows to anticipate action sequences and their consequences online, making it easier to engage in fluent social interaction.