Development of the social brain

251 Pages·2018·2.327 MB·English

by  Elison, Jed T., Sera, Maria D.

Table of Contents
Cover
Preface
List of Contributors
CHAPTER 1: The Evolution and Ontogeny of Deep Social Mind and the Social Brain
INTRODUCTION
PRIMATE MACHIAVELLIAN INTELLIGENCE AND THE SOCIAL BRAIN
FROM MACHIAVELLIAN INTELLIGENCE TO THE CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE
HYPOTHESIS
THE EVOLUTION OF DEEP SOCIAL MIND
THE ONTOGENY OF DEEP SOCIAL MIND: THE LIFE HISTORY MATRIX
THE ONTOGENETIC DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTIONARY FOUNDATIONS
OF DEEP SOCIAL MIND AND ITS SOCIAL BRAIN
CONCLUDING REMARKS
REFERENCES
PART I: Animal Models of Social Brain Function
CHAPTER 2: Neurobiology of Infant Sensitive Period for Attachment and Its
Reinstatement Through Maternal Social Buffering
INTRODUCTION
NEUROBEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT OF LEARNED MATERNAL CUES
DURING THE ATTACHMENT SENSITIVE PERIOD
UNCOVERING THE EFFECTS OF EARLY-LIFE ADVERSITY
CONCLUDING REMARKS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 3: Marmoset Monkey Vocal Communication: Common Developmental
Trajectories With Humans and Possible Mechanisms
INTRODUCTION
THE MARMOSET MONKEY MODEL SYSTEM
BABBLING AND PERINATAL INFLUENCES ON VOCAL OUTPUT
DEVELOPMENT OF VOCAL TURN-TAKING
TURN-TAKING AS THE DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEM UPON WHICH INFANT
VOCALIZATIONS ARE LEARNED
THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM AS THE ENGINE FOR VOCAL
DEVELOPMENT
EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS
CONCLUSIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REFERENCES
PART II: Higher-Order Human Social Brain Function
CHAPTER 4: The Social Brain in Adolescence and Adulthood: Lessons in
Mindreading
INTRODUCTION: WHAT AM I THINKING?
READING MINDS AT ONE'S FOURTH BIRTHDAY PARTY: THE COGNITIVE
FOUNDATIONS OF MENTALIZING
A PRIMER FOR THE NEURAL FOUNDATIONS OF THEORY OF MIND
WHAT THE DIFFICULTIES OF ADULTS CAN TELL US ABOUT THEORY OF
MIND REASONING
READING MINDS LIKE BREATHING AIR: “AUTOMATIC” PERSPECTIVE
TAKING
BUILDING A THEORY OF MIND: FUNCTIONAL AND NEURAL CHANGES
THROUGH CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 5: Developmental Social Neuroscience of Morality
INTRODUCTION
DEFINITIONAL ISSUES AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
PERCEPTION AND SENSITIVITY TO INTERPERSONAL HARM
NEURODEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES IN THIRD-PARTY PERCEPTION OF
INTERPERSONAL HARM
NEUROLOGICAL LESIONS THAT IMPAIR MORAL COGNITION AND
BEHAVIOR
ATYPICAL FUNCTIONAL AND ANATOMICAL CONNECTIVITY
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
WHERE SHOULD DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE BE HEADING?
REFERENCES
NOTE
PART III: Summary and Future Directions
CHAPTER 6: Development of the Social Brain: From Mechanisms to Principles
INTRODUCTION
MECHANISTIC FEATURES OF NEURAL DEVELOPMENT
THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: PERMISSIVE, INSTRUCTIVE, ENABLING,
AND/OR BUFFERING?
CAUSALITY: PARTIAL CORRELATION VERSUS TEMPORAL ORDER
WHAT ARE THE PROCESSES? INSIGHTS FROM THE VARIED NATURE OF
MENTALIZING
DOMAIN SPECIFICITY REVISITED
FROM MECHANISMS TO PRINCIPLES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REFERENCES
Author Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1 Articles indexed in Web of Knowledge according to key words in title or in
topic field.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Group size and encephalization (here, executive brain ratio = volume of
cortex over rest of brain) in primates.
Figure 1.2 Social learning and encephalization in primates. Frequency of social
learning in the survey of Reader and Laland (2002) is plotted against executive brain
ratio (see text for further explanation). Labels refer to three species with complex
cultures discussed extensively in the text.
Figure 1.3 Deep Social Mind. Principal classes of social cognition (in bold capitals) in
hunter-gatherer bands and inferred reinforcing relationships between them, with causal
link indicated by directional arrows (after Whiten & Erdal, 2012). Note that such
relationships cannot be exhaustively illustrated in a single legible figure; those shown
are indicative only. For explanation and discussion see text.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 This schematic represents pups' transitions in attachment learning with odor-
0.5mA shock conditioning. Pups younger than PN10 have robust attachment learning
during a sensitive period due to low CORT levels. This learning circuit requires low
levels of CORT and involves maternal behavior stimulation of the locus coeruleus to
release norepinephrine into the olfactory bulb to induce the neural changes required for
pup learning. Older pups readily learn amygdala-dependent fear because of CORT's
action on the amygdala to permit learning-induced plasticity, although maternal
presence through social buffering lowering of CORT enables the reinstatement of the
sensitive period (Moriceau, Wilson, Levine, & Sullivan, 2006; Upton & Sullivan
2010).
Figure 2.2 This figure summarizes how the HPA axis, social buffering, and its impact
on amygdala-dependent fear changes during development. In the youngest pups, during
the sensitive period for attachment, the stress hyporesponsive period (SHRP) means
pups have low CORT even when receiving stimuli such as shock and adult-like social
buffering does not occur. This age range is associated with attachment learning with a
wide range of stimuli, including milk, tactile stimulation, or pain from shock or an
abusive mother. The maternal odor activates the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) and the
prefrontal cortex (PFC). With maturation, pups enter the transitional sensitive period
and amygdala-dependent fear learning occurs. However, maternal odor socially buffers
pups, and entirely blocks CORT release and amygdala-dependent fear. Finally, as pups
approach weaning and independence, the system becomes more adult-like with
amygdala-dependent fear and social buffering that does not block fear learning. While
social buffering at this age only blocks CORT release by half, additional blockade of
CORT to more fully block CORT still does not reinstate attachment learning. This
suggests a fundamental change in the ability of social buffering to alter pups'
neurobehavioral function (Moriceau et al., 2006; Upton & Sullivan, 2010).
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Infant marmoset vocalizations undergo dramatic acoustic changes. (A)
Vocalizations from one infant. (B) Twitters and trills change usage whereas cries, phee-
cries, and subharmonic-phees transition to phee calls.
Figure 3.2 Babbling sequences and their similarity among twins. (A) Transition
diagrams visualizing vocal sequences from two subjects at different postnatal time
points. Each node in the diagram corresponds to a type of call, and the arrows
correspond to the transitions between call types. The five most frequently produced
call types are: phee (Ph), twitter (Tw), trill (Tr), cry (Cry), and phee-cry (P-C). Node
size is proportional to the fraction of the call types, and edge size is proportional to the
transition probability between calls. Thin dashed arrows are where transitions dropped
below 5% occurrences. (B) Transition diagrams of vocal sequences from the first
postnatal week for three sets of twins. Each twin set is arranged in the vertical order
with the highlighted most frequent four-call transitions plotted on the right. (C)
Comparison of JSDRs in three relationship categories: twins (= 5), nontwin siblings (n
= 12), and nonsiblings (n = 28), p = 3.8e-5, ANOVA.
Figure 3.3 Transition from cry to phee is influenced by contingent parental calls. (A)
Weighted average entropy of infant calls produced before adult call onset and after
adult call offset. The shaded regions indicate the respective 95% confidence intervals.
(B) Correlations between the transition day and the proportion of contingent (left) and
noncontingent (right) parental responses, respectively.
Figure 3.4 Vocal-production learning by infant marmoset monkeys. (A) Twin infants
received either high-contingency playbacks (100%) or low contingency playbacks
(10%). Spectrograms depict when such playbacks were delivered relative to the infant
vocalizations. (B) Wiener entropy (in decibels) changes over postnatal days for high
and low contingency infants. (C) Dominant frequency (in kilohertz) changes over
postnatal days for high and low contingency infants. Shaded regions indicate 1 standard
error intervals.
Figure 3.5 Physiological mechanisms of vocal development in marmoset monkeys.
Figure shows a schematic illustrating spontaneous vocal production as a function of
ANS oscillation and the threshold to vocalize. The continuously produced
vocalizations by very young infant marmosets are driven by the natural rhythmic
activity of respiration whose power is modulated by the slower, 0.1 Hz rhythm of the
ANS. This consequently changes the quality of the vocalizations so that they fluctuate
between high (cry) and low (phee) levels of entropy.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Converging evidence from social neuroscience and neurology demonstrates
that brain regions underpinning moral reasoning are widely distributed and share
computational resources with circuits controlling other capacities such as emotional
saliency, mental state understanding, valuation of rewards, and decision-making. These
regions include the posterior temporal cortex (pSTS) near the temporoparietal junction,
amygdala, insula, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex (dlPFC), and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Importantly, both empathic
concern and moral decision-making require involvement of the vmPFC, a region that
bridges conceptual and affective processes, necessary to guide moral behavior and
decision-making. Human neuroimaging and primate electrophysiology studies show that
the vmPFC tracks the personal subjective value of a wide range of stimuli during active
decision-making and even in the absence of choice. Early damage to this region leads
to impaired moral judgments and decision-making, a lack of concern for others, and
failure to learn from repeated mistakes, despite normal intellect and explicit knowledge
of the consequences of one's decisions.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Trying to understand a microprocessor by lesioning every single one of its
transistors. The map of transistors (right) shows which locations, when lesioned,
prevented the execution of one of three video games or their combination (inset:
Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, or Pitfall). Yet these mere mappings produced no
understanding of how the microprocessor works at all, illustrating that the functions
implemented by individual transistors are difficult to map onto the overall function of
the chip in playing video games.
Figure 6.2 Levels of abstraction in a developmental social neuroscience. Inspired by
David Marr's well-known scheme (Marr, 1982), and variously applied already to
social cognition (Mitchell, 2006), the figure makes the point that we ultimately need to
understand the adaptive problem in the service of which a particular mechanism was
selected through evolution. Mediating between this broad driving force of evolution's
design, and the causal mechanisms we can trace in the brain, are process-level
computations or algorithms (although they need not be written as an equation or script)
that serve to summarize how neurobiological data achieve the functions that they do.
Minnesota Symposia on Child
Psychology
Development of the Social Brain
Volume 39

Edited by
Jed T. Elison
Maria D. Sera
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FIRST EDITION
Preface
The origin for what would become the Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, formally
established in a 1966 meeting and subsequent volume the following year, can potentially be
traced to an event in December 1955 organized by Dale Harris, director of the Institute of
Child Development at the time. Among the participants at this meeting, and contributors to the
volume published in 1957 as The Concept of Development: An Issue in the Study of Human
Behavior, was T.C. Schneirla. Schnierla's theoretical and empirical contributions were rather
disruptive at the time, and in some respect remain so, challenging popular notions of instincts
and simplistic conceptualizations of maturational processes, among others. More relevant to
our concerns, Schneirla's work consistently considered developmental change across
ontogenetic and phylogenetic frames of reference. He also attempted to explicate a precise and
parsimonious description of development, hence the invitation from Professor Harris.
The concept of development would remain the organizing theme for the Minnesota Symposia
meetings/volumes until the first topical meeting was held in 1977 on language development.
This would become the 12th volume, published in 1979. How did the concept of development
fill 11 volumes from 1967 to 1978? In his contribution to the eighth volume in 1974, Irv
Gottesman paraphrased Paul Meehl's paraphrase of Albert Einstein: “The trouble with The
Concept of Development – the annual organizing theme of these volumes – is that it is too
difficult for developmental psychologists, and further, that it is too difficult for developmental
biologists.” In partial homage to Schneirla and Gottesman, we opted to embrace the complexity
of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development in the current volume.
Ninety years after the founding of the Institute of Child Development, 70 years after Harris's
meeting, nearly 40 years after Nicolas Humphrey's The Social Function of Intellect, 30 years
since Michael Gazzaniga's The Social Brain: Discovering Networks of the Mind, and 25
years after Leslie Brothers published The Social Brain: A Project for Integrating Primate
Behavior and Neurophysiology in a New Domain, we organized the 39th Minnesota
Symposium on Child Psychology around the topic of the Development of the Social Brain. I
had preferred the title Phylogeny and Ontogeny of the Social Brain, but as we attempt to
impress on our trainees, concise writing generally represents the best course of action
(although the previous sentence may betray my career stage). This topic attempts a synthesis
across two distinguishable lines of research: the phylogenetic line, which focuses on
identifying the factors that could possibly account for the disproportionate expansion of the
primate neocortex, and a second line of research focused on characterizing the conditions by
which specific neural circuits become dedicated to processing social information across
ontogeny.
To this end, the primary objectives of the two-day symposium held in October of 2015 and
this, the subsequent volume were fourfold:
1. To delineate the prerequisites for the existence of neural circuitry dedicated to processing