社会神经科学研究进展

社会神经科学是研究人类的社会行为及其神经机制的综合性学科.从1992年学科成立至今,社会神经科学研究取得了丰硕的成果.本文系统介绍了该领域4个主要研究方向:社会知觉、社会认知、社会调节和社会互动的研究成果,并在此基础上总结了各研究方向的核心问题,即社会知觉加工的模块化问题、人类社会认知的独特性问题和社会调节加工的跨文化一致性问题.已有研究表明,社会知觉加工至少在计算算法层面是特异化的;心智化系统是人类独有的加工模块;人类社会调节不具备跨文化的一致性;大脑间耦合可能是社会互动共有的神经机制.最后,展望了社会神经科学未来的发展方向.

Overview of Social Neuroscience

Complex social environments are the primary selective pressure for the human brain. Mankind must evolve specialized brain networks to rapidly process social information （e.g., identification of social signals）. However, the exact cognition mechanisms remain unclear. Social neuroscience is the burgeoning field that studies social behavior and underlying neural structures by applying an interdisciplinary, multilevel analysis. It has been fruitful and contributed to fields ranging from psychiatry to economics since its first appearance as a term in 1992. In this article, we systematically review four major aspects of social neuroscience： social perception, cognition, regulation and interaction. Based on that empirical evidence, we try to answer each core question of sub-domains： Is there any specialization for social perception？ Is social cognition unique to humans？ Is social regulation ability universal or sensitive to individual difference？ We conclude that social perception is at least functionally specialized; the mentalizing system is unique to humans and social regulation ability is sensitive to individual difference. Besides, the brain-to-brain coupling may be the core mechanism of social interaction. Finally, based on the present studies and emerging techniques, we point out two broad directions for future research.