Abstract
The social brain is a complex super-network, but the contributing circuits, systems, and networks are not easily separable from the brain’s interconnected whole and may have multiple overlapping functions in cortical and subcortical regions. The term “social brain” is shorthand for the many specialized but shared cognitive–emotional–social brain systems that mediate social interaction. There is evidence that gonadal steroids, the nonapeptides oxytocin and vasopressin, dopamine, mirror neuron function, and metacognition are crucial for typical social interaction behavior. Many social impairments occur in autism, including impaired face recognition, impaired joint attention with others, impaired recognition of emotion, impaired mirror neuron system function, and impaired theory of mind. Despite claims that a unified brain dysfunction causes autism social impairment, heterogeneity in autism has demonstrated that it is implausible that all or even most individuals with autism share a discrete deficit in a particular social brain circuit.
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