ABSTRACT
Although this book is focused on the cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour, an understanding of social cognition in nonhuman animals is critical for unravelling the neural basis of social cognition in humans as well as the selective pressures that have shaped the evolution of complex social cognition. As the result of methodological limitations, we know little about the relationships between certain biochemical and electrophysiological properties of the human brain and how they compute the behaviour and mental states of other individuals. Traditional techniques for examining neural function in humans, such as event-related potentials (ERP), positron emission tomography (PET), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are constrained by the fact that subjects are either placed into an immoveable scanner with a lot of background noise or wired up with dozens of electrodes sensitive to slight movements. The possibility of scanning or recording brain waves from two individuals that are physically interacting socially is technically impossible at present (however, see Montague et al., 2002, for a new method for simultaneously scanning two individuals interacting via a computer).
