ABSTRACT
For humans, like many animal species, survival depends on effective social functioning. Social skills facilitate our access to sustenance, protection and mates, and socially adept individuals tend to be healthier and live longer1,2. However, social interaction in humans is exceedingly complex compared with that in other animal species: representations of internal somatic states, knowledge about the self, perceptions of others and interpersonal motivations are carefully orchestrated to support skilled social functioning. This complex set of processes, which is broadly referred to as social cognition3, has recently been associated with activity in a network of brain regions, including the medial frontal cortex (MFC, in which, for convenience, we include the anterior cingulate cortex, ACC), the temporoparietal junction, the superior temporal sulcus and the temporal poles. This research suggests that the MFC has a special role in social cognition, whereas other regions in the network serve more general functions. However, so far, the functional significance of this activity is not well understood.
