Social behavior is fundamental to human experience, yet the neural mechanisms that govern how individuals perceive, interpret, and respond to one another are only beginning to be understood. Neuroscience of Social Behavior: Bridging the Mind and Society offers a rigorous and integrative examination of the biological foundations of social interaction, synthesizing current knowledge from neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and anthropology into a coherent framework.
The book addresses the full scope of social neuroscience, from the evolutionary origins of the social brain to the challenges posed by digital communication and artificial intelligence. Core topics include social perception, language and communication, empathy, mentalizing, moral cognition, decision-making, and the neural basis of both prosocial and antisocial behavior. The text further explores how hormones and neurochemistry modulate social bonds, how social reward and pain systems shape motivation, and how clinical conditions disrupt social functioning. Computational and translational perspectives are integrated throughout, connecting laboratory findings to real-world implications.
By bridging multiple levels of analysis, from neural circuits and neurochemistry to behavior and societal context, this volume equips readers with a comprehensive understanding of how the brain supports, and sometimes undermines, our capacity for social life.
Table of Contents
1. The Social Brain2. History of Research on Social Interactions
3. Neuroscience Methods of Social Interactions
4. Social Perception and Recognition
5. Language and Communication in Social Cognition
6. Theory of Mind and Mentalizing
7. Neural Basis of Empathy, Altruistic, and Prosocial Behavior
8. Social Decision-Making, Morality, and Dark Aspects of Personality
9. Social Reward and Social Pain
10. The Neurobiology of Social Influence
11. Roles of Hormones in Social Interactions
12. Disorders of Social Functioning
13. Computational Modeling of Social Interactions
14. Social Interactions in the Digital Era
15. The Future of Social Neuroscience
Authors
Mikhail Votinov Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Germany. Mikhail Votinov is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-10), Research CentreJ�lich, and holds an affiliated position at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics,
RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Germany. He received his PhD in cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
from Kyoto University, Japan. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms of social interaction, reward
processing, emotion-guided decision-making, and their disruption in psychiatric conditions. Drawing on
functional and structural neuroimaging, pharmacological challenges, and computational approaches, his
work bridges basic social neuroscience and clinical application. He has published extensively in the fields of
social and affective neuroscience, with particular emphasis on how the brain integrates emotional and social
information to guide adaptive behavior.
