White matter pathways and social cognition.

ABSTRACT: There is a growing consensus that social cognition and behavior emerge from interactions across distributed regions of the "social brain". Researchers have traditionally focused their attention on functional response properties of these gray matter networks and neglected the vital role of white matter connections in establishing such networks and their functions. In this article, we conduct a comprehensive review of prior research on structural connectivity in social neuroscience and highlight the importance of this literature in clarifying brain mechanisms of social cognition. We pay particular attention to three key social processes: face processing, embodied cognition, and theory of mind, and their respective underlying neural networks. To fully identify and characterize the anatomical

SUBMITTER: Wang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5993647 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature