Role of the first and second person perspective for control of behaviour: Understanding other people's facial expressions

Believing and social interactions: effects on bodily expressions and personal narratives

The processes of believing integrate external perceptual information from the environment with internal emotional states and prior experience to generate probabilistic neural representations of events, i.e., beliefs. As these neural representations manifest mostly below the level of a person's conscious awareness, they may inadvertently affect the spontaneous person's bodily expressions and prospective behavior. By yet to be understood mechanisms people can become aware of these representations and reflect upon them. Typically, people can communicate the content of their beliefs as personal statements and can summarize the narratives of others to themselves or to other people. Here, we describe that social interactions may benefit from the consistency between a person's bodily expressions and verbal statements because the person appears authentic and ultimately trustworthy. The transmission of narratives can thus lay the groundwork for social cooperation within and between groups and, ultimately, between communities and nations. Conversely, a discrepancy between bodily expressions and narratives may cause distrust in the addressee(s) and eventually may destroy social bonds.

Beliefs: A challenge in neuropsychological disorders

INTRODUCTION

Beliefs have recently been defined as the neural product of perception of objects and events in the external world and of an affirmative internal affective state reflecting personal meaning. It is, however, undetermined in which way diseases of the brain affect these integrative processes.

METHODS

Here, the formation and updating of abnormal beliefs in cerebral disorders are described.

RESULTS

It will be shown that well-defined neuropsychological syndromes resulting from brain lesions also interfere with the neural processes that enable the formation, up-dating and communication of beliefs. Similarly, in neuropsychiatric disorders abnormal and delusional beliefs appear to be caused by altered perception and/or misattribution of aversive meaning.

CONCLUSION

Given the importance of beliefs for ordinary social behaviour, abnormal beliefs are a challenge in neuropsychological disorders.

Feeling addressed! The neural processing of social communicative cues in patients with major depression

The feeling of being addressed is the first step in a complex processing stream enabling successful social communication. Social impairments are a relevant characteristic of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Here, we investigated a mechanism which—if impaired—might contribute to withdrawal or isolation in MDD, namely, the neural processing of social cues such as body orientation and gesture. During funtional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquisition, 33 patients with MDD and 43 healthy control subjects watched video clips of a speaking actor: one version with a gesture accompanying the speech and one without gesture. Videos were filmed simultaneously from two different viewpoints: one with the actor facing the viewer head‐on (frontal) and one side‐view (lateral). After every clip, the participants were instructed to evaluate whether they felt addressed or not. Despite overall comparable addressment ratings and a large overlap in activation patterns in MDD and healthy subjects for gesture processing, the anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral superior/middle frontal cortex, and right angular gyrus were more strongly activated in patients than in healthy subjects for the frontal conditions. Our analyses revealed that patients showed specifically higher activation than healthy subjects for the frontal condition without gesture in regions including the posterior cingulate cortex, left prefrontal cortex, and the left hippocampus. We conclude that MDD patients can recognize and interpret social cues such as gesture or body orientation; however, they seem to require more neural resources. This additional effort might affect successful communication and contribute to social isolation in MDD.

Belief formation - A driving force for brain evolution

The topic of belief has been neglected in the natural sciences for a long period of time. Recent neuroscience research in non-human primates and humans, however, has shown that beliefs are the neuropsychic product of fundamental brain processes that attribute affective meaning to concrete objects and events, enabling individual goal setting, decision making and maneuvering in the environment. With regard to the involved neural processes they can be categorized as empirical, relational, and conceptual beliefs. Empirical beliefs are about objects and relational beliefs are about events as in tool use and in interactions between subjects that develop below the level of awareness and are up-dated dynamically. Conceptual beliefs are more complex being based on narratives and participation in ritual acts. As neural processes are known to require computational space in the brain, the formation of inceasingly complex beliefs demands extra neural resources. Here, we argue that the evolution of human beliefs is related to the phylogenetic enlargement of the brain including the parietal and medial frontal cortex in humans.

Processes of believing: Where do they come from? What are they good for?

Despite the long scholarly discourse in Western theology and philosophy on religion, spirituality, and faith, explanations of what a belief and what believing is are still lacking. Recently, cognitive neuroscience research addressed the human capacity of believing. We present evidence suggesting that believing is a human brain function which results in probabilistic representations with attributes of personal meaning and value and thereby guides individuals’ behavior. We propose that the same mental processes operating on narratives and rituals constitute belief systems in individuals and social groups. Our theoretical model of believing is suited to account for secular and non-secular belief formation.

Processes of believing: Where do they come from? What are they good for?

Despite the long scholarly discourse in Western theology and philosophy on religion, spirituality, and faith, explanations of what a belief and what believing is are still lacking. Recently, cognitive neuroscience research addressed the human capacity of believing. We present evidence suggesting that believing is a human brain function which results in probabilistic representations with attributes of personal meaning and value and thereby guides individuals' behavior. We propose that the same mental processes operating on narratives and rituals constitute belief systems in individuals and social groups. Our theoretical model of believing is suited to account for secular and non-secular belief formation.