The Neuroscience of Social Interaction Decoding, Imitating, and Influencing the Actions of Others

by Frith, Chris; Wolpert, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780198529255
• ISBN10: 0198529252
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Humans, like other primates, are intensely social creatures. One of the major functions of our brains must be to enable us to be as skilful in social interactions as we are in our interactions with the physical world (eg recognizing objects and grasping them). Furthermore, any differences between human brains and those of our nearest relatives, the great apes, are likely to be linked to our unique achievements in social interaction and communication rather than our motor or perceptual skills. In particular, humans have the ability to mentalize (or mind read), that is to perceive and communicate mental states, such as beliefs and desires. A key problem facing science therefore, is to uncover the biological mechanisms underlying our ability to read other minds and to show how these mechanisms evolved. To solve this problem we need to do experiments in which people (or animals) interact with one another rather than behaving in isolation. Such experiments are now being conducted in increasing numbers and many of the leading exponents of such experiments have contributed to this volume. 'The Neuroscience of Social Interactions' will be an important step in uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying social interactions - undoubtedly one of the major programs for neuroscience in the 21st century.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	ix
Introduction: the study of social interactions	xiii
T Singer, D. M. Wolpert, and C. D. Frith
Biological motion: decoding social signals
1. Electrophysiology and brain imaging of biological motion	1	(22)
A. Puce and D. Perrett
2. Teleological and referential understanding of action in infancy	23	(22)
G. Csibra
3. Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing	45	(32)
U. Frith and C.D. Frith
4. Mathematical modelling of animate and intentional motion	77	(32)
J Rittscher, A. Blake, A. Hoogs, and G. Stein
Mirror neurons: imitating the behaviour of others
5. What imitation tells us about social cognition: a rapprochement between developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience	109	(22)
A. N. Meltzoff and J. Decety
6. Action generation and action perception in imitation: an instance of the ideomotor principle	131	(28)
A. Wohlschlager M. Gattis, and H. Bekkering
7. The manifold nature of interpersonal relations: the quest for a common mechanism	159	(24)
V. Gallese
8. Imitation as behaviour parsing	183	(16)
R. W. Byrne
9. Computational approaches to motor learning by imitation	199	(20)
S. Schaal, A. Ijspeert, and A. Billard
Mentalizing: closing the communication loop
10. Detecting agents	219	(22)
S. C. Johnson
11. Facial expressions, their communicatory functions and neuro-cognitive substrates	241	(24)
R. J. R. Blair
12. Models of dyadic social interaction	265	(18)
D. Griffin and R. Gonzalez
13. Dressing the mind properly for the game	283	(22)
D. Sally
14. A unifying computational framework for motor control and social interaction	305	(18)
D. M. Wolpert, K. Doya, and M Kawato
Index	323