The Neurons of Social Life

Humans are social animals, but what’s going on in the neurons when people interact in groups? Several researchers gathered this morning to offer partial answers to this big question.

Ralph Adolphs of the California Institute of Technology presented evidence that people with amygdala lesions use different facial areas to determine whether an expression is threatening than do healthy controls. Healthy controls focus on the eyes, where people with amygdala damage focus on the mouth. Interestingly, people with autism perform equally well as controls despite using the mouth region. Eye-tracking studies indicate that autistics look at both the mouth and eyes, perhaps because of two competing processes: a natural tendency to look at the mouth area and social training to make eye contact.

Princeton’s Alex Todorov took a different approach. He showed that many, if not all, emotional displays are evaluated for trustworthiness and dominance. People judge trustworthiness based on approachability and dominance based on features signaling physical strength.

Kevin Oschner of Columbia both chaired the session and contributed a unique perspective. He described an experiment designed to test whether empathic accuracy depended on both the empathy of the observer and the expressiveness of the target. High “affect sharing” was related to accuracy only for expressive targets. He discussed several real-world uses, including predicting relationship outcomes, measuring social impairments, and examining social enhancers.

-Bob Nolan