Psychological and Neural Functions of Working Memory in Social Contexts

Abstract

In everyday life, we need to temporally maintain and manipulate various pieces of information in our mind to achieve social and interpersonal goals. Such a temporal memory system that supports goal-directed behavior is called working memory. This article reviews how working memory functions in social contexts from both a psychological and a neuroscience perspective. Many neuroimaging studies have revealed that the frontoparietal network (FPN) is activated when working memory keeps information available independent of the information modality and that the default mode network (DMN) is deactivated when working memory is employed. Thus, the FPN and DMN often show an inverse pattern of activation. Psychological studies investigating the contributions of working memory to mind reading or “theory of mind” (ToM) show that working memory plays a role in keeping available information that is necessary for reasoning about the mental states of others. Therefore, a psychological perspective assumes that FPN activation accompanied by DMN deactivation might support ToM. However, the DMN is also involved in representing self-generated thoughts that are not perceived by our senses, including the mental states of others. Indeed, the DMN includes a set of brain regions that are indispensable to social cognition. Therefore, a neuroscience perspective enables us to assume that balancing and switching between the FPN, which is associated with working memory, and the DMN, which is associated with representing social information, might optimize social cognition. Finally, anticipated avenues for future research on working memory in social cognition are suggested.