The Programming of the Social Brain by Stress During Childhood and Adolescence: From Rodents to Humans

Author(s):  
Stamatina Tzanoulinou ◽  
Carmen Sandi
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Mills ◽  
François Lalonde ◽  
Liv S. Clasen ◽  
Jay N. Giedd ◽  
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 819-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan M McCormick ◽  
Jorien van Hoorn ◽  
Jessica R Cohen ◽  
Eva H Telzer

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 1640-1659
Author(s):  
Irine Symeonidou ◽  
Iroise Dumontheil ◽  
Heather J Ferguson ◽  
Richard Breheny

Most developmental research on Theory of Mind (ToM)—our ability to infer the beliefs, intentions, and desires of others—has focused on the preschool years. This is unsurprising as it was previously thought that ToM skills are developed between the ages of 2 and 7 years. Over the last couple of decades however, studies have provided evidence for significant structural and functional changes in the brain areas involved in ToM (the “social brain”) not only during childhood but also during adolescence. Importantly, some of these findings suggest that the use of ToM shows a prolonged development through middle childhood and adolescence. Although evidence from previous studies suggests a protracted development of ToM, the factors that constrain performance during middle childhood and adolescence are only just beginning to be explored. In this article, we report two visual-world eye-tracking studies that focus on the timecourse of predictive inferences. We establish that when the complexity of ToM inferences are at a level which is comparable with standard change-of-location false-belief tasks, then adolescents and adults generate predictions for other agents’ behaviour in the same timecourse. However, when inferences are socially more complex, requiring inferences about higher order mental states, adolescents generate predictive gaze bias at a marked delay relative to adults. Importantly, our results demonstrate that these developmental differences go beyond differences in executive functions (inhibitory control or working memory) and point to distinct expectations between groups and greater uncertainty when predicting actions based on conflicting desires.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽  
Judith Mildner ◽  
Diana Tamir

One can never know the internal workings of another person – one can only infer others’ mental states based on external cues. In contrast, each person has direct access to the contents of their own mind. Here we test the hypothesis that this privileged access shapes the way people represent internal mental experiences, such that they represent their own mental states more distinctly than the states of others. Across four studies, participants considered their own and others’ mental states; analyses measured the distinctiveness of mental state representations. Two neuroimaging studies used representational similarity analyses to demonstrate that the social brain manifests more distinct activity patterns when thinking about one’s own states versus others’. Two behavioral studies support these findings. Further, they demonstrate that people differentiate between states less as social distance increases. Together these results suggest that we represent our own mind with greater granularity than the minds of others.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Lamont

Alexandra Lamont discusses how musical preferences are a way to construct, reconstruct, and communicate a sense of identity, indicating aspects of personality, attitudes, and lifestyle. She reviews recent research demonstrating how musical preferences can provide information about age, gender, and personality. In addition to the social dimension, she also touches on aspects of personal musical identity that are developed through imagination. Lamont furthermore considers our imagined relationships with the music itself and the musicians responsible for creating and performing it, taking a lifespan perspective from childhood and adolescence through to old age.


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