Neuroscience and Social Science The Missing Link

This book seeks to build bridges between neuroscience and social science empirical researchers and theorists working around the world, integrating perspectives from both fields, separating real from spurious divides between them and delineating new challenges for future investigation. Since its inception in the early 2000s, multilevel social neuroscience has dramatically reshaped our understanding of the affective and cultural dimensions of neurocognition. Thanks to its explanatory pluralism, this field has moved beyond long standing dichotomies and reductionisms, offering a neurobiological perspective on topics classically monopolized by non-scientific traditions, such as consciousness, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. Moreover, it has forged new paths for dialogue with disciplines which directly address societal dynamics, such as economics, law, education, public policy making and sociology. At the same time, beyond internal changes in the field of neuroscience, new problems emerge in the dialogue with other disciplines.

Neuroscience and Social Science – The Missing Link puts together contributions by experts interested in the convergences, divergences, and controversies across these fields. The volume presents empirical studies on the interplay between relevant levels of inquiry (neural, psychological, social), chapters rooted in specific scholarly traditions (neuroscience, sociology, philosophy of science, public policy making), as well as proposals of new theoretical foundations to enhance the rapprochement in question.

By putting neuroscientists and social scientists face to face, the book promotes new reflections on this much needed marriage while opening opportunities for social neuroscience to plunge from the laboratory into the core of social life. This transdisciplinary approach makes Neuroscience and Social Science – The Missing Link an important resource for students, teachers, and researchers interested in the social dimension of human mind working in different fields, such as social neuroscience, social sciences, cognitive science, psychology, behavioral science, linguistics, and philosophy.

Chapter 1: Exploring the borderlands of neuroscience and social science 

Part I - Neuroscientific research on social cognition

Chapter 2: Valuing others: evidence from economics, developmental psychology, and neurobiology

Chapter 3: Bias and control in social decision-making

Chapter 4: Neurobiological approaches to interpersonal coordination: Achievements and pitfalls Chapter 5: The social neuroscience of attachment

Chapter 6: Mindreading in altruists and psychopaths

Chapter 7: From primary emotions to the spectrum of affect: An evolutionary neurosociology of the emotions

Chapter 8: Moral cognition and moral emotions

Chapter 9: On the cognitive (neuro)science of moral cognition: utilitarianism, deontology and the ‘fragmentation of value’

Chapter 10: The social/neuro science: Bridging or polarizing culture and biology?

Part II - Impact of social neuroscience in social spheres

Chapter 11: Dementia and social neuroscience: Historical and cultural perspectives

Chapter 12: Clinical studies of social neuroscience: A lesion model approach

Chapter 13: Psychotherapy and social neuroscience: forging links together

Chapter 14: The brain in the public space: social neuroscience and the media

Part III - Integration of social and neuroscientific insights

Chapter 15: Electrophysiological approaches in the study of the influence of childhood poverty on cognition

Chapter 16: The cultural neuroscience of socioeconomic status

Chapter 17: Social ties, health and wellbeing: A literature review and model

Part IV - Philosophical contributions on theoretical, methodological, and ethical questions

Chapter 18: The self-domesticated animal and its study

Chapter 19: How is our self related to its brain? Neurophilosophical concepts

Chapter 20: Enaction and neurophenomenology in language

Chapter 21: A pluralist framework for the philosophy of social neuroscience

Chapter 22: Social neuroscience and neuroethics: a fruitful synergy

Agustín Ibáñez has research projects in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology and neurodegeneration and over 100 ISI publications in the last 5 years, including published works in top-ten journals on neuroscience (e.g., Nature Reviews Neurology, World Psychiatry, Neurology, JAMA Neurology, Brain, Journal of Neuroscience, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Philosophical Transactions B, SCAN). After his PhD, Dr Ibáñez specialized in electrophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (Germany), and did postdoctoral studies in neuroscience at the Neuroscience Center of Cuba and at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He currently is the Director of the Institute of Translational and Cognitive Neuroscience (INCyT, Argentina); independent researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina); researcher of the Universidad Adolfo Ibanez (Chile); and Associate Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD, Australia). Since 2009, he has directed, co-directed, and evaluated more than 25 master, PhD and postdoctoral research projects. He has received prestigious international awards and grants, and he also has established international collaborations with centers of excellence such as the University of Heidelberg (Germany), the MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom), and the Universities of New York, Caltech, Chicago, and Wisconsin (USA), among others. His intense work has helped South American translational social neuroscience, by establishing a framework to engage basic scientists in translational science through internships, workshops, Masters and PhD programs; organizing educational activities for the medical community, focusing on cognitive neuroscience for general neurologists, biologist, psychologists, other health professionals, and fellows in neurology and other medical specialties; and developing an active, multi-institutional agenda to raise public awareness of social neuroscience in South America. He has proposed the so-called Social-Context Network Model (a fronto-temporo-insular brain network engaged in contextual modulation on different social cognition domains). Dr Ibáñez has previously applied this model to the study of the frontotemporal dementia, as well as other neuropsychiatric conditions (autism developmental disorders, other neurodegenerative conditions, schizophrenia). He has proposed the study of specific brain networks in frontotemporal dementia and Parkinson’s disease; performed different studies in neurodegenerative diseases (AD, FTD, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, among others); combined EEG, imaging, and behavioral assessment in early degeneration; produced several studies with behavioral and brain activation measures (hdEEG and fMRI) as well as brain connectivity tools in several neuropsychiatric conditions.

Lucas Sedeño obtained his Major in Psychology from the University of Buenos Aires in 2010. He is Ph.D in Medical Sciences at Favaloro University. In 2011, he started working at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience (LPEN), within the Institute of Translational and Cognitive Neuroscience (INCyT), INECO Foundation, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since then, he has developed experimental research related to social cognition, interoception, and embodied cognition in patients with neurological (due to stroke and neurodegeneration), cardiac, and anxiety disorders. In 2012 he obtained a scholarship from CONICET for the project “Fronto-temporo-insular networks and contextual cues in social cognition: a lesion study”. The aim of this project is to explore the role of fronto-temporo and insular regions in integrating contextual cues, focusing on their functional connectivity. In recent years, his research has focused on the analysis of neuroimaging data (both structural and functional) to characterize neurological diseases. In this context, in 2015, he obtained a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for a three-month internship in the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). During this period, he received training in voxel-based morphometry (VBM), cortical-thickness analysis, and tract-based spatial statistics for diffusion imaging (DTI). Since 2015 he is the General Director of the LPEN. His publications have appeared in leading journals, such as Stroke, Cortex, Scientific Reports, Neuroimage, SCAN, Cerebral Cortex, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, PLOS ONE, and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.