Chiao & Kensinger p. 1
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Psych 980s: Social and Affective Neuroscience
Fall 2004-05
Tuesday, 4-6pm
WJH 802
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~psy980s/
Instructors:
Joan Chiao
WJH 1168
jchiao@wjh.harvard.edu
Office hours: by appointment
`
Elizabeth Kensinger
WJH 884
ekensing@wjh.harvard.edu
Office hours: by appointment
Enrollment: Limited to 15. Preference will be given to undergraduate students who have
completed Sophomore tutorial. If space permits, graduate students may enroll with permission of
instructor.
Overview: Affective (e.g., mood), social (e.g., person perception), and cognitive (e.g., reasoning,
memory) processes have traditionally been studied in isolation. Yet, in most circumstances, there
are interactions among these different types of processes. For example, affect (e.g., our mood, or
the emotional salience of the information we are processing) can alter performance on cognitive
tasks. Social and affective neuroscience applies the tools traditionally used to study cognition
(neuroimaging, neuropsychology) to better understand affective and social processes, and how those
processes interact with cognitive ones. Researchers in the field hope to answer questions such as:
What processes in the brain lead us to feel disgust? To understand the mental states of others? To
evaluate risk? How are these processes affected by our moods and motivational states? This
seminar will introduce students to the main topics being studied in social affective neuroscience and
to the theoretical advances. Students will critically evaluate the design, methods, and interpretation
of studies and will learn how the methods of cognitive neuroscience are best applied to examine
affective and social processing.
Course Requirements
Attendance
(one unexcused absence allowed—points off grade thereafter)
Participation in class
Thought Papers
Discussion Questions
Presentations
Paper proposal & literature review, due in class, Week 12 (Dec. 7)
Final paper (10-15 pgs), due January 14
% of grade
NA
20
15
10
20
5
30
Readings: Readings consist of a selection of articles and book chapters compiled on CD. CDs will
be distributed at the first class, and students will be responsible for printing the relevant articles for
each week.
Chiao & Kensinger p. 2
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Week-by-Week Structure of Course
Day
Topic
Readings (please read by class meeting)
Introductions
Concept & Overview of Social
Week
Neuroscience
1
What is subsumed under the umbrella
term “social cognition”?
Sept.
Why is it useful to study social
21
cognition using a variety of
techniques & levels of analysis?
Neuroanatomy
o Adolphs, “Cognitive neuroscience of
What are the brain regions that play
human social behaviour”
Week
critical roles in social cognition?
o Cacioppo, et al “Social neuroscience:
2
How can study of patients with focal
Bridging social and biological
brain lesions inform us about brain
systems”
Sept.
function?
o Davidson, “Seven sins in the study of
28
emotion: correctives from affective
neuroscience”
o Morrone-Strupinsky “Neural Basis of
Emotion”
Cognitive-Affective
Interactions
Week Neuroscience techniques
3
Introduction to the methods of fMRI,
PET, and ERP.
Oct.
How can these methods enhance our
5
understanding of social cognition?
Emotion: Perception, Expression,
Experience
Week What is an emotion?
4
How do we perceive, express and
experience emotion?
Oct. Does specialized neural circuitry exist
12
for each aspect of emotion?
o
o
o
o
Bertson, et al “Psychophysiology”
Friston, “Imaging cognitive anatomy”
Hariri, et al “Imaging genomics”
Raichle, “A brief history of human
functional brain mapping”
o Anderson & Phelps, “Lesions of the
human amygdala impair enhanced
perception of emotionally salient
events”
o Anderson & Phelps EA, “Is the
human amygdala critical for the
subjective experience of emotion?…”
o Dolan, “Emotion, cognition, and
behavior”
o Niedenthal, “Emotion”
Chiao & Kensinger p. 3
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Week
5
Cognitive-Affective Interactions (Cont.)
Oct.
19
Stress & Memory
What are the short-term effects of
stress on memory?
What about long-term effects that
accumulate over a lifetime?
Or effects of traumatic experiences?
o McGaugh, “Memory – A century of
consolidation”
o McNally, Chapter 5, “Mechanisms of
traumatic memory”
o Sapolsky, “Glucocorticoids and
hippocampal atrophy in
neuropsychiatric disorders”
Affective Disorders
How do affective disorders, such as
Week
depression or anxiety, affect
6
cognitive processing?
What genetic and neural mechanisms
Oct.
are implicated in these disorders?
26
How do these disorders help us
understand the links between
affect and cognition?
o Davidson, “Affective style and
affective disorders”
o Frodl, “Reduced hippocampal
volumes associated with the long
variant of the serotonin transporter
polymorphism in major depression.”
o MacKinnon, et al “Genetics of manic
depressive illness.”
Emotion: Effects on Moral Reasoning
& Decision Making
o Bechara et al,. “The role of emotion
in decision-making…”
o Davidson et al, “Dysfunction in the
neural circuitry of emotion regulation
- A possible prelude to violence”
o Greene et al, “An fMRI investigation
of emotional engagement in moral
judgment”
o Lo et al., “The psychophysiology of
real-time financial risk processing”
Week
In what ways does emotion underlie
7
humans’ sense of fairness or
justice?
Nov.
How does emotion affect our ability to
2
make decisions?
o Elliott, et al, “Differential response
Week
patterns in the striatum and
8
How do we perceive and respond to
orbitofrontal cortex…”
rewarding stimuli, or to punishers? o Schultz, “Multiple reward signals in
Nov. Can abnormalities in our responses to
the brain”
9
such stimuli lead to criminal
o Small et al, “Changes in brain activity
behavior?
related to eating chocolate”
Reward & Punishment
Chiao & Kensinger p. 4
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Self and Others
Knowledge of Self
Is there anything unique about
Week
the self?
9
How does the brain process
information about oneself?
Nov. Are these processes unique or
16
overlapping with those that
support processing of
information about other
people?
Self-regulation
Week
10
How do we regulate our behavior?
What can lead to failures in selfNov.
regulation?
23
Can we understand OCD or eating
disorders as failures in selfregulatory systems?
Personality & Individual Differences
What are some current
Week
conceptualizations of personality?
11
How do personality differences
manifest themselves at the level of
Nov.
the brain?
30
o Happe, “Theory of mind and the
self…”
o Kelley, et al, “Finding the self…”
o Kircher, et al, “Towards a functional
neuroanatomy of self processing…”
o Leube, et al, “Neural correlates of
perceiving one’s own movements…”
o Beauregard, et al, “Neural correlates
of conscious self-regulation of
emotion”
o Ochsner et al, “Rethinking feelings”
o Tucker, et al, “Social and emotional
self-regulation”
o Canli, et al, “Amygdala response to
happy faces as a function of
extraversion”
o Hariri, et al, “Serotonin transporter
genetic variation and the response of
the human amygdala”
o Paulus, et al “Increased activation in
the right insula during risk-raking
decision making is related to harm
avoidance and neuroticism”
Chiao & Kensinger p. 5
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Person Perception & Agency
Knowledge of Others
What kind of perceptual cues lead to a
concept of a person and how does
the brain process these perceptual
cues?
What are the necessary and sufficient
Week
conditions for recognizing an
12
agent?
In what ways is our concept of an
Dec.
agent similar and/or different from
7
our concept of a person?
How can our understanding of brain
mechanisms underlying person
perception and agency refine our
theories about what these concepts
are?
o Belin, et al, “Voice-selective areas in
human auditory cortex”
o Blakemore, et al, “From the
perception of action to the
understanding of intention”
o Golby, et al “Differential responses in
the fusiform region to same-race and
other-race faces”
o Kanwisher, “Domain-specificity in
face perception”
o Paller, et al “ Neural correlates of
person recognition”
Paper proposal due
Stereotyping & Prejudice
Week
13
Dec.
14
Do we have unique categorization
processes for people relative to
other kinds of things in the world?
Do categories about people have
specialized neural representations?
Do our attitudes for different
categories of people differ?
What kinds of neural mechanisms
underlie these attitudes for people?
o Cunningham, et al “Neural
components of social evaluation”
o Milne, et al, “Ventromedial prefrontal
cortex lesions in humans eliminate
implicit gender stereotyping”
o Phelps, et al, “Intact performance on
an indirect measure of race bias
following amygdala damage”
o Phelps, et al, “Performance on
indirect measures of race evaluation
predicts amygdala activation”
Imitation, Empathy, & Theory of Mind
What types of behaviors constitute
imitation and how is it related to
Week
empathy?
14
What kinds of neural mechanisms
underlie imitation and empathy?
Dec. What cognitive and neural processes
21
allow us to attribute mental states
to others?
How do disorders like Autism &
Fragile X affect TOM?
o Frith & Frith, “The biological basis of
social interaction”
o Gallagher & Frith, “Functional
imaging of theory of mind”
o Herrey, et al, “Making sense of selfconscious emotion: linking theory of
mind and emotion in children with
autism”
o Iacoboni, et al “ Cortical mechanisms
of human imitation”
Chiao & Kensinger p. 6
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Details about assignments:
Presentations:
Students will be assigned, in pairs, to a particular seminar week. Those students will be responsible
for organizing a class presentation (about 15 minutes in length) that can include background
information relevant to that week’s readings, methodological concerns about the studies, discussion
of links to prior week’s topics, etc. The students also should plan to take a lead role in guiding the
discussion for that week, taking note of the questions posted by students on the course website (see
“discussion questions” below).
Thought papers & discussion questions (due at 5pm the evening before each seminar):
The assignment has two parts.
First, you should write a 1-2 page, double-spaced “thought paper” regarding the assigned readings.
This paper should NOT be merely a summary of the readings, but should include your own thoughts
(e.g., about the links between articles, validity of methodology). You may discuss one of the
questions included on the syllabus for that week, or you may choose to focus on another issue raised
in one or more of the readings. This paper should be posted on the course website AND emailed to
the course instructors (jchiao@wjh.harvard.edu, ekensing@wjh.harvard.edu) by 5pm the day before
class (points will be deducted if thought papers are turned in after that time).
Second, you should post on the course website, by 5pm the day before class, 1-2 relevant questions
or issues that you would like to have discussed regarding the readings. These questions will help
the presenters to tailor their discussions, and will also allow other students to contemplate these
questions before class. Your question(s) must be unique (i.e., cannot duplicate those posted by
other students). Points will be deducted if questions duplicate those already posted or are turned in
after 5pm.
Should you miss a thought paper and/or discussion question, you will be given the opportunity to
make up the points (or to make up the point reductions on a late assignment) by (a) attending a
relevant lecture-series talk at Harvard or another University, and writing a 1-2 page thought paper
regarding that talk or (b) participating in an approved experiment at Harvard and writing a 1-2 page
paper regarding the experiment. This substitution may be used for a maximum of 4 thought papers
(in other words, you MUST submit at least 9 thought papers).
Listing of relevant talks at Harvard: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/psych/talks.html
Listing of approved studies: http://studypool.wjh.harvard.edu
Final paper:
For your final paper (due Jan 14th), you are asked to propose an experiment to address a question
of relevance to social and affective neuroscience. Your paper (10-15 double-spaced pages) should
have three main sections: An Introduction, in which you will describe the background literature and
motivate your proposed experiment (Why is it novel? What question(s) would it answer? What are
your hypotheses?); a Methods section, in which you will outline who your participants will be, what
experimental design you will use (e.g., What task will they perform? What will the different
conditions be? What factors will be controlled?) and any other methods (e.g., Will any
neuroimaging methods be used? Will physiological responses be recorded?); and an Implications
section, in which you should discuss how the results of this study would advance knowledge about
the topic you have chosen to examine.
Chiao & Kensinger p. 7
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Before writing your paper, you will submit an experiment proposal (due in class, Dec. 7th). This
assignment should approximate a rough-draft of the Introduction section of your final paper
(approximately 5-7 pages). You should include a literature review of the articles you find most
relevant in motivating your experiment, and you should also briefly describe the experiment that
you are proposing.
Research papers and book chapters referenced in syllabus (organized by class):
* indicates papers not included on CD
Neuroanatomy
Adolphs, R. (2003) Cognitive neuroscience of human social behavior. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, 4, 165-178.
Cacioppo, J. T., Lorig, T. S., Nusbaum, H. C., & Berntson, G. G. (2004). Social neuroscience:
Bridging social and biological systems. In C. Sansone, C. C. Morf, & A. T. Panter (Eds), The Sage
Handbook of methods in social psychology . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Davidson, R.J. (2003). Seven sins in the study of emotion: correctives from affective neuroscience.
Brain and Cognition, 52(1), 129-132.
Morrone-Strupinsky, J.V. & Lane R. (2003). Neural Basis of Emotion. In Nadel L (Ed.) Encyclopedia of
Cognitive Science. London, UK: Macmillian Ltd.
Neuroscience techniques
Berntson, G. G., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2002). Psychophysiology. In H. D’Haenen, J. A. Den Boer,
& P. Willner (Eds.), Biological Psychiatry (Vol. 1, pp. 123-138). West Sussex, England: John
Wiley & Sons.
Friston, K.J. (1997). Imaging cognitive anatomy. Trends in Cognitive Science, 1(1), 21-27.
Hariri AR, Weinberger DR. (2003). Imaging genomics. British Medical Bulletin, 65, 259-70.
*Raichle, ME (2000). A brief history of human functional brain mapping. In A.W. Toga and J.C.
Mazziotta (Eds). Brain Mapping: The Systems. London, UK: Academic Press.
Emotion: perception, expression, experience
Anderson, A, Phelps, E.A. (2001). Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of
emotionally salient events. Nature, 411(6835), 305-9.
Anderson AK, Phelps EA. (2002). Is the human amygdala critical for the subjective experience of
emotion? Evidence of intact dispositional affect in patients with amygdala lesions. Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(5), 709-20.
Chiao & Kensinger p. 8
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Dolan, R.J. (2002). Emotion, cognition, and behavior. Science, 298, 1191-1194
Niedenthal, P. (2003). Emotion. In Nadel L (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. London, UK:
Macmillian Ltd.
Stress and memory
McGaugh, J.L. (2000). Memory – A century of consolidation. Science, 287, 248-251.
*McNally, R.J. (2003). “Mechanisms of traumatic memory” In Understanding Trauma. Belknap
Press: NY, NY.
Sapolsky, R. (2000). Glucocorticoids and hippocampal atrophy in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 57, 925-935.
Affective disorders
Davidson, R.J. (1998). Affective style and affective disorders: Perspectives from affective
neuroscience. Cognition and Emotion, 12, 307-330.
Frodl T, Meisenzahl EM, Zill P, Baghai T, Rujescu D, Leinsinger G, Bottlender R, Schule C,
Zwanzger P, Engel RR, Rupprecht R, Bondy B, Reiser M, Moller HJ. (2004). Reduced
hippocampal volumes associated with the long variant of the serotonin transporter polymorphism in
major depression. Archive of General Psychiatry, 61(2), 177-83.
MacKinnon DF, Jamison KR, DePaulo JR. (1997). Genetics of manic depressive illness.
Annual Review in Neuroscience, 20 ,355-73.
Emotion: Effects on moral reasoning and decision making
Bechara, A. (2004). The role of emotion in decision-making: Evidence from neurological patients
with orbitofrontal damage. Brain and Cognition, 55, 30-40.
Davidson, R.J., Putnam, K.M., & Larson, C.L. (2000). Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of
emotion regulation - A possible prelude to violence. Science, 289, 591-594.
Greene, J.D., Sommerville, R.B., Nystrom, L.E., Darley, J.M., & Cohen, J.D. (2001). An fMRI
investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293(5537), 2105-2108.
Lo, A.W., & Repin, D.V. (2002). The psychophysiology of real-time financial risk processing.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 323-339.
Chiao & Kensinger p. 9
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Reward & punishment
Elliott, R., Newman, J.L., Longe, O.A., & Deakin, J.F.W. (2003). Differential response patterns in
the striatum and orbitofrontal cortex to financial reward in humans: A parametric functional
magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(1), 303-307.
Schultz, W. (2000). Multiple reward signals in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1, 199-207.
Small DM, Zatorre RJ, Dagher A, Evans AC, Jones-Gotman M.(2001). Changes in brain activity
related to eating chocolate: from pleasure to aversion. Brain, 124(9),1720-33.
Self and Others
Happe F. (2003). Theory of mind and the self. Ann N Y Acad Sciences, 1001, 134-44.
Kelley WM, Macrae CN, Wyland CL, Caglar S, Inati S, Heatherton TF. (2002). Finding the self?
An event-related fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(5), 785-94.
Kircher TT, Senior C, Phillips ML, Benson PJ, Bullmore ET, Brammer M, Simmons A, Williams
SC, Bartels M, David AS. (2000). Towards a functional neuroanatomy of self processing: effects of
faces and words. Brain Res Cognitive Brain Research, 10(1-2), 133-44.
Leube DT, Knoblich G, Erb M, Grodd W, Bartels M, Kircher TT. (2003). The neural correlates of
perceiving one's own movements. Neuroimage, 20(4), 2084-90.
Self-regulation
Beauregard M, Levesque J, Bourgouin P. (2001). Neural correlates of conscious self-regulation of
emotion. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(18), RC165.
Ochsner KN, Bunge SA, Gross JJ, Gabrieli JD (2002). Rethinking feelings: an fMRI study of the
cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(8), 1215-1229.
*Tucker DM, Luu P, Pribram KH. (1995). Social and emotional self-regulation. Ann New York
Academy of Sciences, 769, 213-39.
Personality & Individual Differences
Canli, T. Sivers, H., Whitfeld, S.L., Gotlib, I.H., Gabrieli, J.D. (2002). Amygdala response to happy
faces as a function of extraversion. Science, 296, 2191.
Hariri AR, Mattay VS, Tessitore A, Kolachana B, Fera F, Goldman D, Egan MF, Weinberger DR.
(2002). Serotonin transporter genetic variation and the response of the human amygdala. Science,
297(5580), 400-3.
Paulus MP, Rogalsky C, Simmons A, Feinstein JS, Stein MB. (2003). Increased activation in the
right insula during risk-taking decision making is related to harm avoidance and neuroticism.
Neuroimage, 19(4):1439-48.
Chiao & Kensinger p. 10
Social and Affective Neuroscience
Person Perception & Agency
Belin P, Zatorre RJ, Lafaille P, Ahad P, Pike B. (2000). Voice-selective areas in human auditory
cortex. Nature, 403(6767), 309-1.
Blakemore, S.J., and Decety, J. (2001). From the perception of action to the understanding of
intention. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 2, 561-567.
Golby AJ, Gabrieli JD, Chiao JY, Eberhardt JL. (2001). Differential responses in the fusiform
region to same-race and other-race faces. Nature Neuroscience, 4(8):845-50.
Kanwisher N. (2000).Domain specificity in face perception. Nature Neuroscience, 3(8),759-63.
Paller KA, Ranganath C, Gonsalves B, LaBar KS, Parrish TB, Gitelman DR, Mesulam MM, Reber
PJ. (2003). Neural correlates of person recognition. Learning and Memory, 10(4),253-60.
Stereotyping & prejudice
Cunningham WA, Johnson MK, Gatenby JC, Gore JC, Banaji MR (2003). Neural components of
social evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4):639-49.
Milne E, Grafman J. (2001). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions in humans eliminate implicit
gender stereotyping. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(12):RC150.
Phelps EA, Cannistraci CJ, Cunningham WA. (2003). Intact performance on an indirect measure of
race bias following amygdala damage. Neuropsychologia, 41(2):203-8.
Phelps, E.A., O’Connor, K.J., Cunningham, W.A., Funayama, E.S., Gatenby, J.C., Gore, J.C.,
Banaji, M.R. (2000). Performance on indirect measures of race evaluation predicts amygdala
activation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 729-38.
Imitation, Empathy, and Theory of Mind
Frith U. & Frith C. (2001). The biological basis of social interaction. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 10(5), 151-155.
Gallagher, H.L., & Frith, C.D. (2003). Functional imaging of ‘theory of mind.’ Trends in
Cognitive Science, 7(2), 77-83.
Heerey EA, Keltner D, Capps LM. (2003). Making sense of self-conscious emotion: linking theory
of mind and emotion in children with autism. Emotion, 3(4): 394-400.
Iacoboni M, Woods RP, Brass M, Bekkering H, Mazziotta JC, Rizzolatti G. (1999). Cortical
mechanisms of human imitation. Science, 286(5449):2526-8.