Man vs Ape - social complexities
An interview with Rebecca Saxe, a cognitive scientist at MIT, sheds light on humans’ unique ability to teach and interest passing along cultural knowledge and how it compares with other social animals.
Q: Is it true that there might be a brain region dedicated to this coordinating of two minds?
Filed under Animal Facts, Hot Topics, New Research | Comment (0)Saxe: Well, what we do know is that there are definitely regions in the human brain that seem to play special roles in social cognition—in seeing and thinking about other people. And different parts of your brain get involved in coordinating and reasoning about different kinds of social tasks. It appears that this kind of cooperation recruits a very specific part of your brain, right behind the middle of your forehead.
In the last five years, there’s been a huge explosion of research with new tools, new imaging tools, that make it possible to study the living, thinking human brain. And that’s allowed us to study the brain basis of all kinds of things that are uniquely human.