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How Does Social Context Influence Our Brain and Behavior?

- Sandra Baez and Adolfo M. García and Agustín Ibáñez

To interpret context in social settings, your brain relies on a network of brain regions, including the frontal, temporal, and insular regions. These regions help you update contextual information when you focus on something (say, the traffic light as you are walking down the street). That information helps you anticipate what might happen next, based on your previous experiences. If there is a change in what you are seeing (as you keep walking down the street, a mean-looking Doberman appears), the frontal regions will activate and update predictions ("this may be dangerous!"). These predictions will be influenced by the context ("oh, the dog is on a leash") and your previous experience ("yeah, but once I was attacked by a dog and it was very bad!"). If a person's frontal regions are damaged, he or she will find it difficult to recognize the influence of context. Thus, the Doberman may not be perceived as a threat, even if this person has been attacked by other dogs before! The main role of the frontal regions is to predict the meaning of actions by analyzing the contextual events that surround the actions.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00003

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