Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
August 13, 2007
Norman A. S. Farb, Zindel V. Segal, Helen S. Mayberg et al.
1,305 citations
Two distinct forms of self-awareness—one linking experiences across time (narrative focus) and one centered on the present moment (experiential focus)—rely on different brain networks and can be dissociated through mindfulness training. In novice participants, focusing on the present reduced activity in cortical midline regions (medial prefrontal cortex) associated with narrative self-reference. In participants who completed an 8-week mindfulness course, present-moment focus produced more extensive reductions in the medial prefrontal cortex and increased engagement of a right-lateralized network including the lateral prefrontal cortex, insula, and somatosensory areas. Functional connectivity showed strong coupling between the right insula and medial prefrontal cortex in novices that was absent in the mindfulness group, indicating attentional training can uncouple these normally integrated forms of self-awareness.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 11, 2012
Norman A. S. Farb, Zindel V. Segal, Adam K. Anderson
566 citations
Graduates of an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course, compared to a waitlisted control group, showed changes in brain activity during a task requiring attention to breathing sensations. Functional MRI revealed that mindfulness training predicted greater activity in the anterior insula, a brain region that integrates internal body sensations with external context. The training also predicted reduced activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and altered connectivity between that region and the posterior insula, the primary interoceptive cortex. Greater meditation practice was linked to more posterior insula activity and less reliance on visual brain regions during the task. These results suggest that mindfulness training produces plasticity in brain networks involved in sensing the body's internal state, similar to training-related changes seen in the external senses.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
December 3, 2007
Britta K. Hölzel, Ulrich Ott, Tim Gard et al.
544 citations
Long-term mindfulness meditators show greater gray matter concentration in brain regions linked to interoceptive awareness and meditation, including the right anterior insula, left inferior temporal gyrus, and right hippocampus. In a comparison of 20 Vipassana meditators (averaging 8.6 years of practice, 2 hours daily) with matched non-meditators, the amount of meditation training predicted gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus, suggesting a causal impact of practice. The findings indicate that meditation practice is associated with structural brain differences in areas typically activated during meditation and relevant to the task.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
October 4, 2013
Cédric M. Hysek, Yasmin Schmid, Linda D. Simmler et al.
356 citations
MDMA (ecstasy) enhances emotional empathy and prosocial behavior in men but impairs recognition of negative emotions like fear, anger, and sadness, especially in women. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover trial with 32 healthy volunteers, MDMA increased explicit and implicit emotional empathy on the Multifaceted Empathy Test and boosted prosocial choices on the Social Value Orientation test in men. It did not affect cognitive empathy but worsened identification of negative facial expressions on the Face Emotion Recognition Task, particularly in women. MDMA also raised plasma cortisol, prolactin, and oxytocin levels, markers linked to social behavior. These effects may explain MDMA's recreational sociability and its potential therapeutic use in psychotherapy for social dysfunction or PTSD.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
March 24, 2012
Véronique A. Taylor, Véronique Daneault, Joshua A Grant et al.
317 citations
Experienced meditators with over 1000 hours of training show weaker functional connectivity between default mode network (DMN) regions involved in self-referential processing and emotional appraisal compared to beginners with no prior experience. They also show increased connectivity between certain DMN regions, such as the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex and right inferior parietal lobule. These resting-state functional connectivity changes suggest that extensive meditation training may strengthen present-moment awareness by altering how core DMN regions communicate, even when not actively meditating.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
November 22, 2011
Cecilia Westbrook, J. David Creswell, Golnaz Tabibnia et al.
278 citations
Mindful attention reduces both self-reported craving and brain activity linked to craving in smokers. Forty-seven meditation-naïve smokers who had not smoked for 12 hours viewed smoking and neutral images during fMRI, either passively or with mindful attention. Mindful attention lowered self-reported craving to smoking images and decreased neural activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), a craving-related brain region. It also reduced functional connectivity between sgACC and other craving-related regions, suggesting mindfulness decouples craving neurocircuitry. This indicates mindful attention may help reduce subjective and neural reactivity to smoking cues.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
January 17, 2012
Kirk Warren Brown, Robert J. Goodman, Michael Inzlicht
266 citations
People who are more mindful show reduced brain responses to highly arousing unpleasant images, as measured by the late positive potential (LPP) of event-related brain potentials. High arousal unpleasant images generally elicited larger LPP responses, replicating past research. More mindful individuals had lower LPP responses to these images, even after accounting for trait attentional control. In contrast, neuroticism and negative affectivity were linked to larger LPP responses to the same images. Mindfulness was also associated with lower LPP responses to motivationally salient pleasant images (erotica). These findings suggest that mindfulness shapes early neural processing of emotional stimuli, which may contribute to healthier emotional functioning.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 5, 2015
Adrienne A. Taren, Peter J. Gianaros, Carol M. Greco et al.
232 citations
Higher perceived stress over the past month is associated with greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) in a sample of 130 community adults. A subsequent randomized controlled trial with 35 stressed unemployed adults showed that a 3-day intensive mindfulness meditation training, compared to a relaxation training without mindfulness, reduced right amygdala-sgACC connectivity. The findings suggest that mindfulness meditation training may reverse stress-related increases in amygdala-sgACC connectivity, indicating a neural pathway for stress reduction.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
September 5, 2012
Jennifer S Mascaro, James K. Rilling, Lobsang Tenzin Negi et al.
225 citations
A randomized controlled trial tested whether an eight-week compassion meditation program (cognitive-based compassion training, CBCT) improves the ability to infer others' mental states from facial expressions. Twenty-one healthy adults completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test during fMRI scans before and after either CBCT or a health discussion control group. Those who completed CBCT showed significantly greater improvement in empathic accuracy scores and increased brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex compared to controls. Changes in these brain regions correlated with changes in empathic accuracy. The findings suggest CBCT may enhance empathic accuracy and its underlying neural mechanisms.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
April 24, 2013
Fadel Zeidan, Katherine T. Martucci, Robert Kraft et al.
196 citations
Mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety by engaging brain regions that regulate emotion and self-referential thought. In fifteen healthy novice meditators, four days of training lowered state anxiety during meditation sessions but not during a simple breath-attention task. Anxiety relief correlated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and anterior insula. Greater default-mode activity in the posterior cingulate cortex during meditation was linked to higher anxiety, suggesting difficulty controlling self-referential thoughts. The findings indicate that mindfulness meditation attenuates anxiety through mechanisms involved in regulating self-referential thought processes.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
March 21, 2017
Giulia Poerio, Mladen Sormaz, Hao-ting Wang et al.
185 citations
Mind-wandering involves cognition detached from the immediate environment. The default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions far from sensory and motor areas, is implicated but its exact role is unclear. This study examined how individual differences in resting-state DMN connectivity relate to performance on memory, social, and planning tasks and to variability in spontaneous thought. Poor external engagement was linked to stronger coupling between medial and dorsal DMN subsystems, while decoupling of the core from the cerebellum predicted detailed memory retrieval. Both patterns predicted off-task future thoughts. The DMN supports stimulus-independent cognition through strong subsystem coupling and allows memory representations to form conscious experience.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
February 19, 2015
Haakon Engen, Tania Singer
170 citations
Compassion-meditation and Reappraisal both effectively regulate emotional responses to others' suffering, but through different mechanisms. Compassion-meditation primarily increases positive affect and activates brain regions linked to affiliation and reward, such as the ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex, even before seeing distressing stimuli. Reappraisal mainly decreases negative affect. Compassion's regulatory mechanism involves the endogenous generation of positive affect independent of the stimulus, which may preserve emotional connectedness.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
May 2, 2014
Carissa L. Philippi, Daniel Tranel, Melissa Duff et al.
152 citations
Damage to parts of the brain's default mode network (DMN) impairs autobiographical memory. In 92 patients with focal brain lesions, damage to the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal lobule, or medial temporal lobe led to memory deficits. Semantic and episodic autobiographical memories rely on largely distinct neural regions: semantic deficits followed left medial prefrontal and medial temporal damage, while episodic deficits followed right-sided damage, with overlap only in the right inferior parietal lobule. These results provide neuropsychological evidence that the DMN is necessary for autobiographical memory and clarify its role in self-referential processing.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
July 18, 2012
Mei-Kei Leung, Chetwyn C H Chan, Jing Yin et al.
145 citations
Long-term practice of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is linked to greater gray matter volume in specific brain regions involved in emotional regulation and empathy. Using magnetic resonance imaging, experts who had practiced LKM for at least five years showed more gray matter in the right angular gyrus and posterior parahippocampal gyrus compared to novices. The right angular gyrus finding is novel for meditation research and may relate to cognitive empathy. Greater gray matter also appeared in the left temporal lobe, consistent with studies of other meditation styles. These results suggest that LKM may influence brain structures underlying affective regulation, empathic response, anxiety, and mood.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 17, 2016
Patty van Cappellen, Baldwin M. Way, Suzannah F. Isgett et al.
138 citations
Intranasal oxytocin increased self-reported spirituality in midlife men, an effect that persisted for at least a week. The hormone also boosted positive emotions during meditation, both explicitly and implicitly. The effect was moderated by genetic variations in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR rs53576) and CD38 (rs6449182 and rs3796863). These findings provide experimental evidence that the oxytocin system, known for social bonding, may also support spirituality.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
September 4, 2014
Ulrich Kirk, Kirk Warren Brown, Jonathan Downar
66 citations
Reward seeking is common and adaptive, but excessive pursuit of monetary rewards can reduce well-being. People trained in mindfulness meditation show lower brain reactivity to monetary incentives. In a functional MRI study, 34 meditators and 44 matched controls performed a monetary incentive delay task equally well, but meditators had lower activation in the caudate nucleus during reward anticipation and higher activation in the bilateral posterior insula. During reward receipt, meditators showed reduced activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Connectivity between the right caudate and bilateral anterior insula was weaker in meditators during anticipation. These findings indicate that mindfulness meditators are less susceptible to monetary rewards at a neural level.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
April 13, 2016
Mick Lehmann, Erich Seifritz, A Henning et al.
58 citations
Distraction and rumination are distinct ways people respond to negative thoughts and feelings. Rumination involves elevated self-focus, linked to increased resting state functional connectivity and decreased reactivity within the default mode network. The NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine reduces functional connectivity in this network, but its effects on brain responses during stimulus perception were unknown. In healthy subjects given a single ketamine dose, blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) reactivity to negative emotional pictures increased specifically in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, not in a posterior control region. The increase was greater in subjects with low ability to use distraction during negative experiences. Ketamine may attenuate pathological increased self-focus during negative experiences.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
March 27, 2014
Margaret C. Wardle, Matthew G. Kirkpatrick, Harriet de Wit
52 citations
MDMA (ecstasy) increases positive emotional responses specifically to pictures containing people, while reducing positive responses to non-social positive pictures. In two studies with 101 healthy occasional MDMA users, participants rated their reactions to positive, negative, and neutral images with and without social content after receiving different doses of MDMA. The drug did not simply amplify all positive feelings; instead, it selectively enhanced the appeal of social scenes. This suggests MDMA's prosocial effects—such as increased closeness and sociability—may arise from making social contact feel more valuable relative to non-social rewards, which could explain its recreational appeal and potential therapeutic use in psychotherapy.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
May 24, 2018
Alexandra Martelli, David Chester, Kirk Warren Brown et al.
31 citations
Mindfulness—receptive attentiveness to present-moment experience—may buffer the distress of social rejection. In a functional MRI study, participants reported their trait mindfulness, then played Cyberball, a social rejection game. Those higher in mindfulness reported less distress during rejection. This effect was mediated by lower activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region linked to inhibiting negative affect. Mindfulness also correlated with weaker functional connectivity between that region and the amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, areas involved in generating social distress. The findings suggest mindfulness may aid coping with rejection by not over-activating top-down regulatory mechanisms, potentially fostering more effective long-term emotion regulation.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
April 23, 2021
Maja Rou Marstrand-Joergensen, M. Madsen, Dea Siggaard Stenbæk et al.
20 citations
Resting-state functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) is negatively associated with the personality trait Openness to experience, particularly its Fantasy subfacet. Extraversion shows both negative and positive associations with connectivity between specific brain networks: negatively with visual–dorsal attention network connectivity and positively with frontoparietal–language network connectivity. These results, based on 295 healthy participants and 470 scan sessions, link personality domains to distributed neurobiological systems and suggest neural pathways that may underlie related clinical conditions and treatment responses.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
January 31, 2026
Carla Soares, Gisela Lima, Marta Teixeira et al.
1 citation
A pharmacoimaging study examined how ayahuasca affects a brain region involved in social perception, the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), which is part of the third visual pathway. Twelve healthy volunteers received two doses of ayahuasca (0.5 mg/kg and 0.8 mg/kg DMT) or a placebo in a crossover design. The higher dose increased connectivity of the right pSTS with visual and mirror-neuron brain regions. This enhanced connectivity correlated with stronger perspective-taking experiences. Participants also reported improved social relationships one week later, even though acute effects were minimal. The findings suggest ayahuasca strengthens early social information processing through the third visual pathway and mirror-neuron systems, offering a basis for its prosocial therapeutic effects.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 16, 2026
Isaac R Christian, Samuel A Nastase
Thinking about the minds of others and thinking about one's own mind rely on both shared and distinct brain regions. Using fMRI and multi-voxel pattern analysis, brain activity patterns in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex encoded mental state inferences only for the self, while more dorsal regions encoded such inferences for both self and others. The posterior cingulate cortex distinguished whether the target of mental state inference was self or other. Cross-classification analysis revealed that patterns in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and right temporoparietal junction were sensitive to mental state reasoning regardless of whether the target was self or other. These findings suggest a functional hierarchy where some brain areas support agent-specific reasoning and others support more abstract, agent-general reasoning.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 9, 2026
Grace Qiyuan Miao, Ian J Lieberman, Ashley Binnquist et al.
During deep conversations, pairs of strangers feel more socially connected than during shallow ones, and this feeling is linked to increased synchrony in the default mode network (DMN) of their brains, especially in the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). The study measured brain activity with functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in 70 stranger dyads. DMN synchrony, particularly in the TPJ, appears to help strangers 'see eye-to-eye' and feel connected during face-to-face interactions.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
January 21, 2026
Marla Dressel, Naomi Nero, Paige Freeburg et al.
Loneliness in the United States has reached an all-time high and is linked to lower self-reported empathy. A randomized controlled trial tested whether loving kindness meditation (LKM) reduces loneliness and increases empathy. One hundred eight participants completed either LKM or active control training; neural empathic responding was measured in 54 participants using functional MRI. Both interventions reduced loneliness, but neither increased trait empathy, failing to support the hypothesis that LKM reduces loneliness by boosting empathy. Loneliness was not credibly associated with differences in neural empathic responding, but lonelier individuals reported lower empathy. The results suggest that lonelier people may simulate others' experiences yet not perceive themselves as empathetic, pointing to interventions that address maladaptive social cognition.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
January 18, 2025
Feng Xiao, Qimei Peng, XiaoTian Wang
Repeatedly imagining one's own future life up to its end, a practice called intertemporal meditation, shortens perceived time and increases feelings of peacefulness while reducing anxiety in young adults. Intertemporal meditation combines mindfulness meditation with episodic future thinking. Compared with mindfulness meditation alone, intertemporal meditation produced higher overall brain activity, especially in left-hemisphere regions involved in emotion regulation and cognitive control (dorsolateral prefrontal, anterior prefrontal, and orbitofrontal cortices) and in right-hemisphere areas linked to social cue processing and autobiographical memory (Broca's area and middle temporal gyrus). The findings suggest intertemporal meditation helps regulate emotions and may improve cognitive control.