Key Points
-
Social cognitive neuroscience is concerned with the representation of the self, the perception of social groups (such as race and gender stereotypes), and the ability to make inferences about the knowledge, beliefs and desires of the self and of others (known as theory of mind).
-
The results of brain imaging studies have implicated a network of brain regions in social cognition, in which the medial prefrontal cortex (including the anterior cingulate cortex) has a special role.
-
Anatomical studies of the medial prefrontal cortex have revealed systematic differences in connectivity along an axis moving from dorsal through rostral to ventral regions around the genu of the corpus callosum. Functional imaging studies have confirmed this distinction, revealing a progression from motor regions to cognitive and emotional regions.
-
Social cognition tasks engage the central region of this axis, the anterior rostral medial frontal cortex (arMFC). The more dorsal region (posterior rostral MFC, prMFC) is involved in action monitoring and the updating of the predicted value of actions, whereas the more ventral region (orbital MFC) is involved in monitoring reward and punishment, and in the updating of the predicted value of outcomes.
-
Activity in the arMFC is elicited by various social cognitive tasks that have in common the need to reflect on mental states of the self or the mental states of others, including both thoughts and feelings.
-
There is a systematic increase in the complexity or abstractness of representations along an axis from the most superior and dorsal region to the most anterior and rostral region of the MFC. Objective properties of states such as pain are represented in the most dorsal region. The prMFC represents subjective properties, which are re-representations of the objective properties of states. Finally, in the arMFC the subjective properties of states are re-represented, creating metacognitive representations that allow us to think about the subjective states of the self and other people.
-
These meta-cognitive representations are necessary for high level social interactions such as those involving trust, in which we need to have not only self-knowledge and knowledge of others, but also reflected self-knowledge (that is, knowledge of what others think about us).
Abstract
Social interaction is a cornerstone of human life, yet the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition are poorly understood. Recently, research that integrates approaches from neuroscience and social psychology has begun to shed light on these processes, and converging evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests a unique role for the medial frontal cortex. We review the emerging literature that relates social cognition to the medial frontal cortex and, on the basis of anatomical and functional characteristics of this brain region, propose a theoretical model of medial frontal cortical function relevant to different aspects of social cognitive processing.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$189.00 per year
only $15.75 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fnrn1884/MediaObjects/41583_2006_Article_BFnrn1884_Fig1_HTML.jpg)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fnrn1884/MediaObjects/41583_2006_Article_BFnrn1884_Fig2_HTML.jpg)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fnrn1884/MediaObjects/41583_2006_Article_BFnrn1884_Fig3_HTML.jpg)
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Cohen, S. Social relationships and health. Am. Psychol. 59, 676–684 (2004).
Silk, J. B., Alberts, S. C. & Altmann, J. Social bonds of female baboons enhance infant survival. Science 302, 1231–1234 (2003).
Fiske, S. T. & Taylor, S. E. Social Cognition (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1991).
Bargh, J. A. in Handbook of Social Cognition: Basic Processes (Eds Wyer, R. S. Jr & Srull, T. K.) 1–40 (Hillsdale, New Jersey/Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. England, 1994).
Devine, P. G. Stereotypes and prejudice: their automatic and controlled components. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 56, 5–18 (1989).
Kihlstrom, J. F. The cognitive unconscious. Science 237, 1445–1452 (1987).
Eslinger, P. J. & Damasio, A. R. Severe disturbance of higher cognition after bilateral frontal lobe ablation: patient EVR. Neurology 35, 1731–1741 (1985).
Farah, M. J. Agnosia. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2, 162–164 (1992).
Ochsner, K. N. & Lieberman, M. D. The emergence of social cognitive neuroscience. Am. Psychol. 56, 717–734 (2001). The authors propose the theoretical and methodological integration of neuroscience, cognitive science and social psychology, and introduce the new field of social cognitive neuroscience.
Bush, G., Luu, P. & Posner, M. I. Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex. Trends Cogn. Sci. 4, 215–222 (2000).
Ullsperger, M. & von Cramon, D. Y. Neuroimaging of performance monitoring: error detection and beyond. Cortex 40, 593–604 (2004). Important evidence on the connectivity of medial prefrontal cortex obtained from studies of the monkey that provides a model of anatomical connectivity of the MFC in humans.
Barbas, H., Ghashghaei, H., Dombrowski, S. M. & Rempel-Clower, N. L. Medial prefrontal cortices are unified by common connections with superior temporal cortices and distinguished by input from memory-related areas in the rhesus monkey. J. Comp. Neurol. 410, 343–367 (1999).
Carmichael, S. T. & Price, J. L. Connectional networks within the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of macaque monkeys. J. Comp. Neurol. 371, 179–207 (1996).
Bates, J. F. & Goldman-Rakic, P. S. Prefrontal connections of medial motor areas in the rhesus monkey. J. Comp. Neurol. 336, 211–228 (1993).
Amaral, D. G. & Price, J. L. Amygdalo-cortical projections in the monkey (Macaca fascicularis). J. Comp. Neurol. 230, 465–496 (1984).
Vogt, B. A. & Pandya, D. N. Cingulate cortex of the rhesus monkey: II. Cortical afferents. J. Comp. Neurol. 262, 271–289 (1987).
Ray, J. P. & Price, J. L. The organization of projections from the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus to orbital and medial prefrontal cortex in macaque monkeys. J. Comp. Neurol. 337, 1–31 (1993).
Petrides, M. & Pandya, D. N. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: comparative cytoarchitectonic analysis in the human and the macaque brain and corticocortical connection patterns. Eur. J. Neurosci. 11, 1011–1036 (1999).
Ongur, D., Ferry, A. T. & Price, J. L. Architectonic subdivision of the human orbital and medial prefrontal cortex. J. Comp. Neurol. 460, 425–449 (2003).
Sherwood, C. C., Holloway, R. L., Semendeferi, K. & Hof, P. R. Is prefrontal white matter enlargement a human evolutionary specialization? Nature Neurosci. 8, 537–538; author reply 538 (2005).
Koski, L. & Paus, T. Functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex within the human frontal lobe: a brain-mapping meta-analysis. Exp. Brain Res. 133, 55–65 (2000). Provides a useful account of the connectivity of the ACC based on human functional data.
Croxson, P. L. et al. Quantitative investigation of connections of the prefrontal cortex in the human and macaque using probabilistic diffusion tractography. J. Neurosci. 25, 8854–8866 (2005).
Paus, T., Petrides, M., Evans, A. C. & Meyer, E. Role of the human anterior cingulate cortex in the control of oculomotor, manual, and speech responses: a positron emission tomography study. J. Neurophysiol. 70, 453–469 (1993).
Picard, N. & Strick, P. L. Motor areas of the medial wall: a review of their location and functional activation. Cereb. Cortex 6, 342–353 (1996).
Paus, T., Koski, L., Caramanos, Z. & Westbury, C. Regional differences in the effects of task difficulty and motor output on blood flow response in the human anterior cingulate cortex: a review of 107 PET activation studies. Neuroreport 9, R37–R47 (1998).
Steele, J. D. & Lawrie, S. M. Segregation of cognitive and emotional function in the prefrontal cortex: a stereotactic meta-analysis. Neuroimage 21, 868–875 (2004). A careful meta-analysis of studies activating the MFC that reveals clear functional segregation of cognitive and emotional processes.
Botvinick, M. M., Cohen, J. D. & Carter, C. S. Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: an update. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8, 539–546 (2004).
Botvinick, M., Nystrom, L. E., Fissell, K., Carter, C. S. & Cohen, J. D. Conflict monitoring versus selection-for-action in anterior cingulate cortex. Nature 402, 179–181 (1999).
Carter, C. S. et al. Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the online monitoring of performance. Science 280, 747–749 (1998).
Liddle, P. F., Kiehl, K. A. & Smith, A. M. Event-related fMRI study of response inhibition. Hum. Brain Mapp. 12, 100–109 (2001).
Barch, D. M. et al. Anterior cingulate cortex and response conflict: effects of response modality and processing domain. Cereb. Cortex 11, 837–848 (2001).
Gehring, W., Goss, B., Coles, M., Meyer, D. & Donchin, E. A neural system for error detection and compensation. Psychol. Sci. 4, 385–390 (1993).
Brázdil, M. et al. Combined event-related fMRI and intracerebral ERP study of an auditory oddball task. Neuroimage 26, 285–293 (2005).
Dehaene, S., Posner, M. & Tucker, D. Localization of a neural system for error detection and compensation. Psychol. Sci. 5, 303–305 (1994).
Yeung, N., Cohen, J. D. & Botvinick, M. M. The neural basis of error detection: conflict monitoring and the error-related negativity. Psychol. Rev. 111, 931–959 (2004).
Bartholow, B. D. et al. Strategic control and medial frontal negativity: beyond errors and response conflict. Psychophysiology 42, 33–42 (2005).
Hajcak, G., Moser, J. S., Yeung, N. & Simons, R. F. On the ERN and the significance of errors. Psychophysiology 42, 151–160 (2005).
Amodio, D. M. et al. Neural signals for the detection of unintentional race bias. Psychol. Sci. 15, 88–93 (2004).
Walton, M. E., Devlin, J. T. & Rushworth, M. F. Interactions between decision making and performance monitoring within prefrontal cortex. Nature Neurosci. 7, 1259–1265 (2004). Reveals an important distinction between monitoring actions and monitoring outcomes in the prefrontal cortex.
Knutson, B., Taylor, J., Kaufman, M., Peterson, R. & Glover, G. Distributed neural representation of expected value. J. Neurosci. 25, 4806–4812 (2005).
Coricelli, G. et al. Regret and its avoidance: a neuroimaging study of choice behavior. Nature Neurosci. 8, 1255–1262 (2005). An important demonstration of the role of emotion (anticipated regret) in decision making
Brown, J. W. & Braver, T. S. Learned predictions of error likelihood in the anterior cingulate cortex. Science 307, 1118–1121 (2005).
Holroyd, C. B. & Coles, M. G. The neural basis of human error processing: reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychol. Rev. 109, 679–709 (2002).
Rolls, E. T. The orbitofrontal cortex. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 351, 1433–1443; discussion 1443–1444 (1996).
Elliott, R., Dolan, R. J. & Frith, C. D. Dissociable functions in the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex: evidence from human neuroimaging studies. Cereb. Cortex 10, 308–317 (2000).
Camille, N. et al. The involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the experience of regret. Science 304, 1167–1170 (2004).
Fellows, L. K. & Farah, M. J. Different underlying impairments in decision-making following ventromedial and dorsolateral frontal lobe damage in humans. Cereb. Cortex 15, 58–63 (2005).
Ridderinkhof, K. R., Ullsperger, M., Crone, E. A. & Nieuwenhuis, S. The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control. Science 306, 443–447 (2004).
Alexander, G. E., DeLong, M. R. & Strick, P. L. Parallel organization of functionally segregated circuits linking basal ganglia and cortex. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 9, 357–381 (1986).
Lehericy, S. et al. Diffusion tensor fiber tracking shows distinct corticostriatal circuits in humans. Ann. Neurol. 55, 522–529 (2004).
Baumeister, R. F. in The Handbook of Social Psychology Vol. 1, 4th edn (eds Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T. & Lindzey, G.) 680–740 (McGraw Hill, New York, USA, 1998).
Johnson, S. C. et al. Neural correlates of self-reflection. Brain 125, 1808–1814 (2002).
Kelley, W. M. et al. Finding the self? An event-related fMRI study. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 14, 785–794 (2002).
Lieberman, M. D., Jarcho, J. M. & Satpute, A. B. Evidence-based and intuition-based self-knowledge: an fMRI study. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 87, 421–435 (2004).
Schmitz, T. W., Kawahara-Baccus, T. N. & Johnson, S. C. Metacognitive evaluation, self-relevance, and the right prefrontal cortex. Neuroimage 22, 941–947 (2004).
Zysset, S., Huber, O., Ferstl, E. & von Cramon, D. Y. The anterior frontomedian cortex and evaluative judgment: an fMRI study. Neuroimage 15, 983–991 (2002).
Macrae, C. N., Moran, J. M., Heatherton, T. F., Banfield, J. F. & Kelley, W. M. Medial prefrontal activity predicts memory for self. Cereb. Cortex 14, 647–654 (2004).
Ochsner, K. N. et al. Reflecting upon feelings: an fMRI study of neural systems supporting the attribution of emotion to self and other. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 16, 1746–1772 (2004). An important demonstration of the role of the MFC in emotion attributions, and a detailed review of MFC activation associated with inferring emotional responses of the self and others.
Phan, K. L., Wager, T., Taylor, S. F. & Liberzon, I. Functional neuroanatomy of emotion: a meta-analysis of emotion activation studies in PET and fMRI. Neuroimage 16, 331–348 (2002).
Lieberman, M. D. & Pfeifer, J. H. in Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotional and Social Behavior (eds Easton, A. & Emery, N.) 195–235 (Psychology Press, Philadelphia, in the press).
Mitchell, J. P., Heatherton, T. F. & Macrae, C. N. Distinct neural systems subserve person and object knowledge. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 15238–15243 (2002).
Mason, M. F., Banfield, J. F. & Macrae, C. N. Thinking about actions: the neural substrates of person knowledge. Cereb. Cortex 14, 209–214 (2004).
Mitchell, J., Macrae, C. & Banaji, M. Forming impressions of people versus inanimate objects: social-cognitive processing in the medial prefrontal cortex. Neuroimage 26, 251–257 (2005).
Iacoboni, M. et al. Watching social interactions produces dorsomedial prefrontal and medial parietal BOLD fMRI signal increases compared to a resting baseline. Neuroimage 21, 1167–1173 (2004).
Gobbini, M. I., Leibenluft, E., Santiago, N. & Haxby, J. V. Social and emotional attachment in the neural representation of faces. Neuroimage 22, 1628–1635 (2004).
Mitchell, J. P., Banaji, M. R. & Macrae, C. N. General and specific contributions of the medial prefrontal cortex to knowledge about mental states. Neuroimage 28, 757–762 (2005). An important demonstration that activity in the MFC is associated with the inference of others' mental states, rather than specific person-related attributes.
Ochsner, K. N. et al. The neural correlates of direct and reflected self-knowledge. Neuroimage 28, 797–814 (2005).
Mitchell, J. P., Banaji, M. R. & Macrae, C. N. The link between social cognition and self-referential thought in the medial prefrontal cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17, 1306–1315 (2005).
Craik, F. I. M. et al. In search of the self: a positron emission tomography study. Psychol. Sci. 10, 26–34 (1999).
Frith, U. & Frith, C. D. Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 358, 459–473 (2003).
Premack, D. & Woodruff, G. Chimpanzee problem-solving: a test for comprehension. Science 202, 532–535 (1978).
Fletcher, P. C. et al. Other minds in the brain: a functional imaging study of 'theory of mind' in story comprehension. Cognition 57, 109–128 (1995).
Goel, V., Grafman, J., Sadato, N. & Hallett, M. Modeling other minds. Neuroreport 6, 1741–1746 (1995).
Saxe, R., Carey, S. & Kanwisher, N. Understanding other minds: linking developmental psychology and functional neuroimaging. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 55, 87–124 (2004).
Gilbert, D. T. in The Handbook of Social Psychology Vol. 2, 4th edn (eds Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T. & Lindzey, G.) 89–150 (McGraw Hill, New York, USA, 1998).
Jones, E. E. & Davis, K. E. in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (ed. Berkowitz, L.) 220–266 (Academic, New York, 1965).
Harris, L. T., Todorov, A. & Fiske, S. T. Attributions on the brain: neuro-imaging dispositional inferences, beyond theory of mind. Neuroimage 28, 763–769 (2005).
Walter, H. et al. Understanding intentions in social interaction: the role of the anterior paracingulate cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 16, 1854–1863 (2004).
Grezes, J., Frith, C. & Passingham, R. E. Brain mechanisms for inferring deceit in the actions of others. J. Neurosci. 24, 5500–5505 (2004). Demonstrates an interesting distinction between the role of the MFC and the pSTS in social cognition that involves mentalizing.
Grezes, J., Frith, C. D. & Passingham, R. E. Inferring false beliefs from the actions of oneself and others: an fMRI study. Neuroimage 21, 744–750 (2004).
Ochsner, K. N. & Gross, J. J. The cognitive control of emotion. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9, 242–249 (2005).
Craig, A. D. How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 3, 655–666 (2002). Proposes that interoceptive information is represented in an explicit form in the anterior insula.
Rainville, P., Duncan, G. H., Price, D. D., Carrier, B. & Bushnell, M. C. Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science 277, 968–971 (1997).
Rainville, P. et al. Cerebral mechanisms of hypnotic induction and suggestion. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 11, 110–125 (1999).
Wager, T. D. et al. Placebo-induced changes in fMRI in the anticipation and experience of pain. Science 303, 1162–1167 (2004).
Salomons, T. V., Johnstone, T., Backonja, M. M. & Davidson, R. J. Perceived controllability modulates the neural response to pain. J. Neurosci. 24, 7199–7203 (2004).
Singer, T. et al. Empathy for pain involves the affective but not sensory components of pain. Science 303, 1157–1162 (2004). Reveals functional segregation of the anterior cingulate in relation to sensory and affective properties of pain.
Jackson, P. L., Meltzoff, A. N. & Decety, J. How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy. Neuroimage 24, 771–779 (2005).
Morrison, I., Lloyd, D., di Pellegrino, G. & Roberts, N. Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: is empathy a multisensory issue? Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci. 4, 270–278 (2004).
Donkers, F. C., Nieuwenhuis, S. & van Boxtel, G. J. Mediofrontal negativities in the absence of responding. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res. 25, 777–787 (2005).
Luu, P., Tucker, D. M., Derryberry, D., Reed, M. & Poulsen, C. Electrophysiological responses to errors and feedback in the process of action regulation. Psychol. Sci. 14, 47–53 (2003).
Gehring, W. J. & Willoughby, A. R. The medial frontal cortex and the rapid processing of monetary gains and losses. Science 295, 2279–2282 (2002).
van Schie, H. T., Mars, R. B., Coles, M. G. & Bekkering, H. Modulation of activity in medial frontal and motor cortices during error observation. Nature Neurosci. 7, 549–554 (2004).
Bates, A. T., Patel, T. P. & Liddle, P. F. External behavior monitoring mirrors internal behavior monitoring: error-related negativity for observed errors. J. Psychophysiol. 19, 281–288 (2005).
Lane, R. D. et al. Neural correlates of levels of emotional awareness. Evidence of an interaction between emotion and attention in the anterior cingulate cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 10, 525–535 (1998).
Gusnard, D. A., Akbudak, E., Shulman, G. L. & Raichle, M. E. Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: relation to a default mode of brain function. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 98, 4259–4264 (2001). A classic paper examining the functional significance of 'resting activity' in fMRI studies. The authors suggest that self-referential processes correspond to the default mode of function in the MFC.
Lane, R. D., Fink, G. R., Chau, P. M. & Dolan, R. J. Neural activation during selective attention to subjective emotional responses. Neuroreport 8, 3969–3972 (1997).
Nieuwenhuis, S., Ridderinkhof, K. R., Blom, J., Band, G. P. & Kok, A. Error-related brain potentials are differentially related to awareness of response errors: evidence from an antisaccade task. Psychophysiology 38, 752–760 (2001).
Van Veen, V. & Carter, C. S. The timing of action-monitoring processes in the anterior cingulate cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 14, 593–602 (2002).
Eisenberger, N. I. & Lieberman, M. D. Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8, 294–300 (2004).
Amodio, D. M., Kubota, J. T., Harmon-Jones, E. & Devine, P. G. Alternative mechanisms for regulating racial responses according to internal vs. external cues. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. (in the press).
Schwarz, N. & Clore, G. L. Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: informative and directive functions of affective states. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 45, 513–523 (1983).
Devine, P. G., Monteith, M. M., Zuwerink, J. R. & Elliot, A. J. Prejudice with and without compunction. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 60, 817–830 (1991).
Higgins, E. T. Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect. Psychol. Rev. 94, 319–340 (1987).
Camerer, C. F. Psychology and economics. Strategizing in the brain. Science 300, 1673–1675 (2003).
McCabe, K., Houser, D., Ryan, L., Smith, V. & Trouard, T. A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 98, 11832–11835 (2001). The first demonstration of a role for the MFC in trust and reciprocity games.
Rilling, J. K., Sanfey, A. G., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E. & Cohen, J. D. The neural correlates of theory of mind within interpersonal interactions. Neuroimage 22, 1694–1703 (2004).
Wimmer, H. & Perner, J. Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition 13, 103–128 (1983).
Brunet, E., Sarfati, Y., Hardy-Bayle, M. C. & Decety, J. A PET investigation of the attribution of intentions with a nonverbal task. Neuroimage 11, 157–166 (2000).
Heider, F. & Simmel, M. An experimental study of apparent behavior. Am. J. Psychol. 57, 243–249 (1944).
Castelli, F., Happe, F., Frith, U. & Frith, C. Movement and mind: a functional imaging study of perception and interpretation of complex intentional movement patterns. Neuroimage 12, 314–325 (2000).
Gallagher, H. L., Jack, A. I., Roepstorff, A. & Frith, C. D. Imaging the intentional stance in a competitive game. Neuroimage 16, 814–821 (2002).
Corcoran, R., Cahill, C. & Frith, C. D. The appreciation of visual jokes in people with schizophrenia: a study of 'mentalizing' ability. Schizophr. Res. 24, 319–327 (1997).
Gallagher, H. L. et al. Reading the mind in cartoons and stories: an fMRI study of 'theory of mind' in verbal and nonverbal tasks. Neuropsychologia 38, 11–21 (2000).
Adolphs, R. Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 4, 165–178 (2003).
Gusnard, D. A. & Raichle, M. E. Searching for a baseline: functional imaging and the resting human brain. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 2, 685–694 (2001).
Fransson, P. Spontaneous low-frequency BOLD signal fluctuations: an fMRI investigation of the resting-state default mode of brain function hypothesis. Hum. Brain Mapp. 26, 15–29 (2005).
Lieberman, M. D., Gaunt, R., Gilbert, D. T. & Trope, Y. in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (ed. Zanna, M.) 199–249 (Academic, New York, 2002).
D'Argembeau, A. et al. Self-referential reflective activity and its relationship with rest: a PET study. Neuroimage 25, 616–624 (2005).
Maguire, E. A. & Mummery, C. J. Differential modulation of a common memory retrieval network revealed by positron emission tomography. Hippocampus 9, 54–61 (1999).
Maguire, E. A., Mummery, C. J. & Buchel, C. Patterns of hippocampal–cortical interaction dissociate temporal lobe memory subsystems. Hippocampus 10, 475–482 (2000).
Bonda, E., Petrides, M., Ostry, D. & Evans, A. Specific involvement of human parietal systems and the amygdala in the perception of biological motion. J. Neurosci. 16, 3737–3744 (1996).
Turk, D. J. et al. From facial cue to dinner for two: the neural substrates of personal choice. Neuroimage 22, 1281–1290 (2004).
Bottini, G. et al. The role of the right hemisphere in the interpretation of figurative aspects of language. A positron emission tomography activation study. Brain 117, 1241–1253 (1994).
Ferstl, E. C. & von Cramon, D. Y. What does the frontomedian cortex contribute to language processing: coherence or theory of mind? Neuroimage 17, 1599–1612 (2002).
German, T. P., Niehaus, J. L., Roarty, M. P., Giesbrecht, B. & Miller, M. B. Neural correlates of detecting pretense: automatic engagement of the intentional stance under covert conditions. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 16, 1805–1817 (2004).
Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. & Cohen, J. D. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293, 2105–1208 (2001).
Heekeren, H. R. et al. Influence of bodily harm on neural correlates of semantic and moral decision-making. Neuroimage 24, 887–897 (2005).
Kampe, K. K., Frith, C. D. & Frith, U. “Hey John”: signals conveying communicative intention toward the self activate brain regions associated with “mentalizing”, regardless of modality. J. Neurosci. 23, 5258–5263 (2003).
Schilbach, L. et al. Being with virtual others: neural correlates of social interaction. Neuropsychologia (in the press).
Vogeley, K. et al. Mind reading: neural mechanisms of theory of mind and self-perspective. Neuroimage 14, 170–181 (2001).
Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Gray, J. R., Molfese, D. L. & Snyder, A. Anterior cingulate cortex and response conflict: effects of frequency, inhibition and errors. Cereb. Cortex 11, 825–836 (2001).
Bunge, S. A., Hazeltine, E., Scanlon, M. D., Rosen, A. C. & Gabrieli, J. D. Dissociable contributions of prefrontal and parietal cortices to response selection. Neuroimage 17, 1562–1571 (2002).
Casey, B. J. et al. Dissociation of response conflict, attentional selection, and expectancy with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 97, 8728–8733 (2000).
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D. & Williams, K. D. Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science 302, 290–292 (2003).
Kerns, J. G. et al. Anterior cingulate conflict monitoring and adjustments in control. Science 303, 1023–1026 (2004).
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to D. Passingham, J. Mitchell, K. Ochsner and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on early versions of this review.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Related links
Glossary
- Talairach coordinates
-
Talairach coordinates provide a standardized method for describing the location of activations in the brain in three-dimensional space. Talairach space comprises x, y and z coordinates (represented as x,y,z): x denotes left versus right, y denotes rostral (anterior) versus caudal (posterior), and z denotes dorsal (superior) versus ventral (inferior). The Montreal Neurological Institute's system uses the same metric space, but their coordinates are based on a slightly larger and more representative brain.
- Stroop colour-naming task
-
The Stroop task is commonly used to investigate response conflict. Participants view words presented in colours (for example, red and blue) that are either compatible (red written in red) or incompatible (red written in blue) with the word meaning. On incompatible trials, participants must inhibit the prepotent tendency to read the word's text in order to correctly report the colour of the word.
- Response inhibition
-
Response inhibition refers to the process of withholding a habitual response when changing task demands require an alternative response. Response inhibition is a crucial component of behavioural regulation that has been ascribed as a function of the posterior rostral ACC by much research, although it probably involves the coordination of several neural systems.
- Event-related potential
-
(ERP). An electrical signal produced by summated postsynaptic potentials of cortical neurons in response to a discrete event, such as a stimulus or response in an experimental task. Typically recorded from the scalp in humans, ERPs can be measured with extremely high temporal resolution and can be used to track rapid, real-time changes in neural activity.
- Blood oxygen level dependent signal
-
(BOLD signal). fMRI measures local changes in the proportion of oxygenated blood in the brain; the blood oxygen level dependent, or BOLD, signal. This proportion changes in response to neural activity. Therefore, the BOLD signal, or haemodynamic response, indicates the location and magnitude of neural activity.
- Working memory
-
Working memory refers to a set of processes involved in rehearsing and manipulating information that has either just been experienced or just been retrieved from long-term memory, often in the service of goal-directed behaviour. Working memory functions are typically associated with activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Amodio, D., Frith, C. Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci 7, 268–277 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1884
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1884
This article is cited by
-
Brain tissue- and cell type-specific eQTL Mendelian randomization reveals efficacy of FADS1 and FADS2 on cognitive function
Translational Psychiatry (2024)
-
Social cognition across the schizophrenia–bipolar disorder spectrum
Nature Reviews Psychology (2024)
-
Monitoring the neural activity associated with praying in Sahaja Yoga meditation
BMC Neuroscience (2023)
-
The effects of environmental factors associated with childhood urbanicity on brain structure and cognition
BMC Psychiatry (2023)
-
Social circuits and their dysfunction in autism spectrum disorder
Molecular Psychiatry (2023)