Social neuroscience articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Through modelling, neural recordings and behavioural experiments, a study shows that individual electric fish use electrical pulses of conspecifics to extend their electrolocation range, discriminate objects and increase information transmission.

    • Federico Pedraja
    •  & Nathaniel B. Sawtell

  • Article |

    Studies in mice show that observational fear learning is encoded by neurons in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in a manner that is distinct from the encoding of fear learned by direct experience.

    • Shana E. Silverstein
    • , Ruairi O’Sullivan
    •  & Andrew Holmes

  • Perspective |

    This Perspective reviews successful applications of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and presents a case for fMRI as a central hub on which to integrate the dispersed subfields of systems, cognitive, computational and clinical neuroscience.

    • Emily S. Finn
    • , Russell A. Poldrack
    •  & James M. Shine

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Behavioural electrophysiological and transcriptomic studies in mice show that psychedelic drugs reopen the social reward learning critical period and suggest that this involves reorganization of the extracellular matrix.

    • Romain Nardou
    • , Edward Sawyer
    •  & Gül Dölen

  • Article |

    Wireless tracking of neuronal activity in social groups of mice identifies neurons in the anterior cingulate that hold representations of an animal’s social rank and can influence the competitive effort that the animal exerts.

    • S. William Li
    • , Omer Zeliger
    •  & Ziv M. Williams

  • Article |

    Using intracranial electrocorticography and a series of motor tasks, a speech planning network that is central to natural language generation during social interaction is identified.

    • Gregg A. Castellucci
    • , Christopher K. Kovach
    •  & Michael A. Long

  • Article |

    Recordings of cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex identify a population of neurons that encode information about others’ beliefs and distinguish them from self-belief-related representations, providing insight into cellular-level processing underlying human theory of mind.

    • Mohsen Jamali
    • , Benjamin L. Grannan
    •  & Ziv M. Williams

  • Article |

    In zebrafish, the expression levels of the neuropeptide Pth2 change as exposure to conspecifics is limited or increased, and these changes track the presence of individuals and group density through mechanical stimulations induced by the movements of other fish.

    • Lukas Anneser
    • , Ivan C. Alcantara
    •  & Erin M. Schuman

  • Article |

    Increasing expression of the autism-associated gene Ube3a, either alone or in combination with seizures, not only impairs sociability in mice but also reduces expression of the synaptic organizer Cbln1 in the ventral tegmental area, thus weakening glutamatergic transmission.

    • Vaishnav Krishnan
    • , David C. Stoppel
    •  & Matthew P. Anderson

  • Article |

    In male mice oxytocin acts as a social reinforcement signal within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) core, where it elicits a presynaptically expressed long-term depression (LTD) of excitatory synaptic transmission in medium spiny neurons; deletion of oxytocin receptors from the dorsal raphe nucleus, which provides serotonergic innervation of the NAc, and blockade of NAc serotonin 1B receptors both prevent oxytocin-induced LTD and social reward.

    • Gül Dölen
    • , Ayeh Darvishzadeh
    •  & Robert C. Malenka

  • Letter |

    Economic games are used to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying cooperative behaviour, and show that intuition supports cooperation in social dilemmas, whereas reflection can undermine these cooperative impulses.

    • David G. Rand
    • , Joshua D. Greene
    •  & Martin A. Nowak

  • News Q&A |

    How do our brains respond when we see someone of a different ethnicity?

    • Mo Costandi

  • Books & Arts |

    The past decade has seen a revolution in our perception of primates' social brains, says Christian Keysers.

    • Christian Keysers

  • Column |

    A little empathy goes a long way in the competitive confines of a laboratory, argues Lydia Soraya Murray.

    • Lydia Soraya Murray

  • News & Views |

    Many of us were raised or currently live in an urban environment. A neuroimaging study now reveals how this affects brain function when an individual is faced with a stressful situation. See Letter p.498

    • Daniel P. Kennedy
    •  & Ralph Adolphs

  • Books & Arts |

    Malfunctioning brain networks only partly explain why some people act cruelly, finds Stephanie Preston

    • Stephanie Preston

  • Article |

    Certain regions of the hypothalamus are important in aggression, but until recently, it has been difficult to specifically stimulate specific cell types within a mixed population of cells. Here, optogenetics is used to solve this specificity problem, finding that optogenetic stimulation of a subdivision within the ventromedial hypothalamus can elicit inappropriate attack behaviours in mice, but electrical stimulation does not produce the same result. Additional analysis of genetic and electrophysiological activity revealed overlapping neuronal subpopulations involved in fighting and mating, with potential competition between these behaviours, as neurons activated during aggression are inhibited during mating.

    • Dayu Lin
    • , Maureen P. Boyle
    •  & David J. Anderson

  • Books & Arts |

    Instructions for the afterlife from Ancient Egypt reveal a step change in moral psychology, discovers Andrew Robinson.

    • Andrew Robinson

  • News Feature |

    Can epigenetics underlie the enduring effects of a mother's love? Lizzie Buchen investigates the criticisms of a landmark study and the controversial field to which it gave birth.

    • Lizzie Buchen

  • Opinion |

    Emotions such as empathy and disgust might be at the root of morality, but psychologists should also study the roles of deliberation and debate in how our opinions shift over time, argues Paul Bloom.

    • Paul Bloom

  • Muse |

    The finding that religion scarcely influences moral intuition undermines the idea that a godless society will be immoral, says Philip Ball. Whether it 'explains' religion is another matter.

    • Philip Ball

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