ABSTRACT
Social neuroscience is applied to an emerging field of study concerned with identifying the neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, and neural processes underlying social behavior or social cognition. The international, Interdisciplinary Society for Social Neuroscience was launched in January 2010. This chapter examines the research in social neuroscience, particularly the research in the neuroanatomical and neurochemical underpinnings for theory of mind (ToM) and related behaviors. The study of metacognition emerged at the same time as the study of ToM, but while researchers investigating ToM focused on its development in young children, researchers investigating metacognition focused on school-age children and adolescents. Metacognition is thinking about one's thinking and, hence, is an aspect of intrapersonal cognitive ToM. Affective ToM has two components: an affective cognitive component that involves an awareness or recognition of one's own feelings or the feelings of others and an affective empathy component that involves the ability to experience the emotions of others.
