VOLUME LXXIII | JAN 2023

Uncovering the Cognitive Structures of Social Representations

Just like how we build mental maps of our physical environment, cognitive neuroscience is revealing that our brains also make organized representations of social information. By studying how humans encode, recall, and generalize knowledge, researchers have found that social information follows similar patterns. Social relationships, mental states, personal traits, and social environments can all be represented conceptually within our minds. This understanding has been supported by experimental investigations, observational studies, and the mapping of neural activation. The field of cognitive neuroscience is formalizing these social representations to provide insight into psychiatric symptoms and behavior. The research suggests that by understanding how these representations are formed and organized, we can gain a better understanding of psychiatric conditions and develop more effective treatments. To dive deeper into this fascinating research and its implications for mental health, check out the full article!

Anne-Marie Dubois

Anne-Marie is a French-Canadian philosopher from New Brunswick, delving into existential questions of human purpose and fulfillment. Her contributions encourage reflective practices for realizing potential, inspired by Acadian resilience and communal wisdom.

The field of cognitive neuroscience has taken important steps toward uncovering the mechanisms by which humans build representations of our environment. Integrated experimental and theoretical work suggests that humans encode, organise, recall, and generalise knowledge within cognitive structures to allow for flexible behaviour [1–4]. There is now ample evidence that social information is structured in a similar way [5]; relationship structures, mental states, traits of individuals, and social environments can be mapped as conceptual representations that are recoverable from experimental investigations [6], observational studies [7], and neural activation [8,9].
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