SOCIAL COGNTION

KEY BRAIN AREAS

• Amygdala: organises our emotional responses
• Parietal cortex: helps distinguish ourselves from others
• Frontal cortex: involved in social decision making, planing and reasoning
• Motor related areas: involved in the control of movement

ROLE OF MIRROR NEURONS

• Neurons: they are specialised to transmit electrical activity, the electrical activity codes Information in the brain
• E.E.G: a recording of the electrical activity of the brain
• Mirror neurons fire when we make a movement or when we see another person make the movement
• They are sensitive to intentionality and do not fire to random movements
• They are used to explain empathy responses to other people, especially in relation to facial expressions

RESEARCH INTO THE ROLE OF MIRROR NEURONS

• Umitta et al(2001)
• Demonstrated that monkeys can understand the meaning of actions and that mirror neurons are discharged only when the monkey may want to imitate the behaviour(ie in order to get food) not when they wouldn't(because there is no food there)

EVALUATION OF RESEARCH

• evidence that the mirror neuron system takes account of the context of the action
• The relationship between the mirror neuron system and autism is not clear
• Single-cell activity can only be recorded in non-human primates such as monkeys
• The approach is reductionist, it only focuses on the biological explanation
• Research is mainly from monkeys-cannot generalise findings to humans
• FMRI scans of the brain are not sufficiently detailed enough to identify what is happening at the level of individual neurons