Meeting of Minds: The medial frontal cortex and
social cognition by David M. Amodio & Chris D. Frith (2006).
Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 7, 268-277.
Medial Frontal cortex: 3 divisions
1.
Orbital (orMFC): BA 14 & 25
2.
Anterior (arMFC): BA 10 & 32
3.
Posterior (prMFC): 24,9 & 8
Social cognition: all the processes that deal with knowledge of
the self, perceptions of others including their internal somatic and
mental states, and interpersonal motivations
• Functional divisions of MFC
• Pr MFC: Evaluating social consequences of one’s actions
• Ar MFC: Self knowledge, person perception, mentalizing
• oMFC: Evaluating social consequences of outcomes
(outcomes are broader than actions; one may highly value and outcome, such as getting a raise, but
devalue the action required for the outcome such as kissing up to the boss).
prMFC: evaluating social consequences of one’s
actions
• Action monitoring, error correction, conflict monitoring between
intentions/actions
• Assessment of actions against desires, values, and goals.
• Self-selected actions more so than directed ones
arMFC: Self knowledge, person perception,
mentalizing
• Evaluation of self-related traits
• Monitoring of one’s emotional state
• Thinking about others: as others become more familiar activation
tends to move more to the front (anterior-orbital) of arMFC
• Theory of mind: attributing mental states to others
• Cartoon used to measure ‘mentalizing.’
oMFC: Evaluating social consequences of
outcomes
•
•
•
•
Evaluates and prioritizes outcomes of actions/situations
Rates reward value of stimuli and responses
Deals with outcome itself, rather than outcomes of actions.
Focus on degree of regret in various outcomes
• Studies with pain perception
suggest that as activation moves
more forward pain is less tied to
sensory inputs and interpreted more
abstractly.
• Anterior activation also found when
making judgments about reputation
of other’s and self