Lecture 7 - Social Neuroscience: Reading faces and bodies

The Social Brain: Critical Perspectives on Science, Society and Neurodiversity

Richard Ramsey

Today


Part 1

  • Social Neuroscience: Reading faces and bodies


Part 2

  • Read articles and discuss



Reading faces and bodies

For an overview, See Chapter 5 from Ward (2022)

Overview


  • Recap “Social Brain” circuits

  • Perceiving faces

  • Perceiving bodies

  • Joint attention

  • Trait inferences from faces and bodies

Recap social brain circuits

Social brain circuits


(Adolphs, 2009; Stanley & Adolphs, 2013)

Perceiving faces

Faces

A cognitive model

(Bruce & Young, 1986; Duchaine & Yovel, 2015)

Neural basis of face perception

(Duchaine & Yovel, 2015)

Core and extended systems

(Duchaine & Yovel, 2015; Haxby et al., 2000)

Perceiving bodies

Bodies

Neural basis of body perception


(Peelen & Downing, 2007)

Bodies in motion

Neural basis of bodies in motion

(Grossman et al., 2000; Pitcher & Ungerleider, 2021)

Joint attention

Eye gaze













(Frischen et al., 2007)

Eye gaze in social contexts

[Le Tricheur à l’as de carreau by Georges de la Tour (c. 1635)]

Neural basis of joint attention

(Hooker et al., 2003; Klein et al., 2009; Redcay & Schilbach, 2019; Shepherd, 2010)

Trait inferences from faces and bodies

Trait inferences from faces

Can we infer personality traits from faces?

(Penton-Voak et al., 2006; Todorov et al., 2015; Todorov et al., 2025)

Caution


  • ‘A kernal of truth’

  • Self-fulfilling prophecies

  • Consensus despite a lack of accuracy

(Todorov et al., 2015; Todorov et al., 2025)

Trait inferences from bodies


(Greven et al., 2019)

Trait inferences from bodies: fMRI


(Greven et al., 2019)

Trait inferences from bodies: fMRI

  • Muscular > Slim engaged body-selective brain areas
  • Heavy > Slim engaged the theory-of-mind network
  • Only when an explicit judgment was required (Exp. 2 and not Exp. 1)

(Greven et al., 2019)

Take a break

Part 2 - Read and discuss

Discussion material


References

Adolphs, R. (2009). The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge. Annual Review of Psychology, 60(1), 693–716. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514
Bruce, V., & Young, A. (1986). Understanding face recognition. British Journal of Psychology (London, England: 1953), 77 ( Pt 3), 305–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1986.tb02199.x
Duchaine, B., & Yovel, G. (2015). A Revised Neural Framework for Face Processing. Annual Review of Vision Science, 1, 393–416. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-vision-082114-035518
Frischen, A., Bayliss, A. P., & Tipper, S. P. (2007). Gaze cueing of attention: Visual attention, social cognition, and individual differences. Psychological Bulletin, 133(4), 694–724. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.4.694
Greven, I. M., Downing, P. E., & Ramsey, R. (2019). Neural networks supporting social evaluation of bodies based on body shape. Social Neuroscience, 14(3), 328–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2018.1448888
Grossman, E., Donnelly, M., Price, R., Pickens, D., Morgan, V., Neighbor, G., & Blake, R. (2000). Brain Areas Involved in Perception of Biological Motion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(5), 711–720. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892900562417
Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A., & Gobbini, M. I. (2000). The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(6), 223–233. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VH9-40CRS36-9/2/25211601271cd66be6930a32cc7af4b1
Hooker, C. I., Paller, K. A., Gitelman, D. R., Parrish, T. B., Mesulam, M. M., & Reber, P. J. (2003). Brain networks for analyzing eye gaze. Cognitive Brain Research, 17(2), 406–418. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6SYV-493H3SV-7/2/4e9c65ed3352a98b1b6cde74834f519f
Klein, J. T., Shepherd, S. V., & Platt, M. L. (2009). Social Attention and the Brain. 19(20), R958–R962. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0960982209015401
Peelen, M. V., & Downing, P. E. (2007). The neural basis of visual body perception. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8(8), 636–648. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2195
Penton-Voak, I. S., Pound, N., Little, A. C., & Perrett, D. I. (2006). Personality Judgments from Natural and Composite Facial Images: More Evidence For A “Kernel Of Truth” In Social Perception. Social Cognition, 24(5), 607–640. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2006.24.5.607
Pitcher, D., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2021). Evidence for a Third Visual Pathway Specialized for Social Perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(2), 100–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.11.006
Redcay, E., & Schilbach, L. (2019). Using second-person neuroscience to elucidate the mechanisms of social interaction. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 20(8), 495–505.
Shepherd, S. V. (2010). Following gaze: Gaze-following behavior as a window into social cognition. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 4. www.frontiersin.org/neuroscience/integrativeneuroscience/paper/10.3389/fnint.2010.00005/html/
Stanley, D. A., & Adolphs, R. (2013). Toward a Neural Basis for Social Behavior. Neuron, 80(3), 816–826. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0896627313009902
Todorov, A., Oh, D., Uddenberg, S., & Albohn, D. N. (2025). Face evaluation: Findings, methods, and challenges. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1545(1), 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15293
Todorov, A., Olivola, C. Y., Dotsch, R., & Mende-Siedlecki, P. (2015). Social attributions from faces: Determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. Annu Rev Psychol, 66, 519–545. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143831
Ward, J. (2022). The Student’s Guide to Social Neuroscience (3rd ed.). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003057697

Acknowledgements