Social Cognition & Evaluation
Before we can regulate a feeling, our brains are already deciding who and what matters. Scroll through faces in a crowd: most barely register, yet your partner's face pulls your attention instantly. How does the brain mark what is personally significant?
This research area studies how we represent ourselves and others, and how we evaluate the people who matter to us — including how we appraise a romantic partner. One question we're chasing: does the medial prefrontal cortex really draw a hard line between self and other, or does it track something more graded — a gradient of personal significance?
The same evaluative machinery has a darker side, and we follow it there too. Our work on attitudes toward intimate partner violence against women traces harmful social appraisals from brain networks to daily-life experience, building models that could help predict — and prevent — where such attitudes take hold.
Funded by
Projects
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Attitudes Towards Intimate Partner Violence against Women: From Neural Networks to Daily Life Experience (Neuro-IPVAW) (101154975), MARIE SKŁODOWSKA-CURIE ACTIONS (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01), 2024 - 2026 (active)
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Self-Other Gradient — personal significance in the medial prefrontal cortex
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Alignment of Internal Trait Models and Social Goals in Romantic Choice (ALIGN)
Team
Carmen Morawetz (PI), Sofia Amaoui (Neuro-IPVAW), David Lang (Self-Other Gradient), Aaron Tolone (ALIGN)
Key publications
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Amaoui, S., Marín-Morales, A., Martín-Pérez, C., Pérez-García, M., Verdejo-Román, J., (2023) Intrinsic neural network dynamics underlying the ability to down-regulate emotions in male perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women. . 228(9):2025-2040. doi: 10.1007/s00429-023-02696-x.
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Meshi, D., Mamerow, L., Kirilina, E., Margulies, D.S., Heekeren, H.R. (2016). Sharing self-related information is associated with intrinsic functional connectivity of cortical midline brain regions. , 6: 22491.
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Meshi, D., Morawetz, C., Heekeren, H.R. (2013). Nucleus accumbens response to gains in reputation for the self relative to gains for others predicts social media use. Front Hum Neurosci. Aug 29;7:439. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00439