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This chapter examines the arguments that claim that human antisocial behavior—notably impulsivity, aggression, and related forms of criminal conduct—have neurobiological roots. While neurobiological evidence from genomics or functional brain imaging is likely to have limited traction in the criminal courtroom itself, a new diagram is nonetheless emerging in the criminal justice system as it encounters developments in the neurosciences. This does not entail a challenge to doctrines of free will or an exculpatory argument that “my brain made me do it,” as some have suggested. Rather it is developing around the themes of susceptibility, prediction, and precaution that have come to infuse many aspects of criminal justice systems as they have come to focus on questions of risk—risk assessment, risk management, and risk reduction.

This chapter explores the neurobiological self. It argues that the emerging neuroscientific understandings of selfhood are unlikely to efface modern human beings' understanding of themselves as persons equipped with a deep interior world of mental states that have a causal relation to their action. Rather, they are likely to add a neurobiological dimension to human beings' self-understanding and their practices of self-management. In this sense, the “somatic individuality” which was once the province of the psy- sciences, is spreading to the neuro- sciences. Yet psy is not being displaced by neuro: neurobiological conceptions of the self are being construed alongside psychological ones.

This chapter reviews current knowledge of the neurobiological regulation of affiliative, aggressive, sexual, and parental behavior in nonhuman primates. It focuses on social behavior expressed in the context of interactions between two or more individuals. It begins by reviewing research on the neurochemical control of primate social behavior, particularly studies of endogenous opioids, oxytocin and vasopressin, and the brain monoamine systems. It then considers the results of brain lesion studies investigating the neural substrates of primate social behavior. The chapter concludes by summarizing the main trends emerging from this literature review, and by discussing future research directions.

The placebo effect, or placebo response, is a psychobiological phenomenon that must not be confounded with other phenomena, such as spontaneous remission and statistical regression to the mean. The nocebo effect, or nocebo response, is a negative placebo effect, which goes in the opposite direction compared to the placebo effect. There are many placebo effects with different biological mechanisms and in different systems and apparatuses that are triggered by the psychosocial context around the patient and the therapy. Expectation of a future outcome plays a central role, and may act through different mechanisms, such as reduction in anxiety and activation of reward circuits. Learning plays a crucial role, and powerful placebo effects may be induced through a conditioning procedure. Placebo and placebo-related effects may be related to other self-regulatory processes and may have emerged during evolution as a defence mechanism of the body.

This chapter describes the putative neurobiological mechanisms of illusory contour perception in vertebrates and invertebrates. Different animal species with divergent and independently evolved visual systems perceive illusory contours. Animals of very different classes—such as owls and cats (Aves and Mammalia), and even very diverse phyla, like bees and monkeys (Arthropoda and Chordata)—perceive illusory contours. This is surprising, since the visual systems and pathways of these animals have evolved completely independently (in the case of insects and vertebrates) or at least largely independently (for instance, in birds and mammals) from each other. Clearly, there is a high selection pressure for animals of different taxa to see boundaries in the absence of contrast borders, and this constitutes an evolutionary advantage. Therefore, different species may have adopted convergent neural strategies to enable the perception of illusory contours.

This chapter begins by reviewing what is known about the mechanism that links subjective value to action. The first and most important goal of this examination is to achieve a convincing mechanistic separation between expected subjective value and action. The second goal of the chapter is to identify mismatches between economic theory and neurobiological data within hard expected utility (Hard-EU) and to examine, as a test case, how neuroeconomics should deal with such mismatches.

Over the past two decades, a tremendous amount of data has been gathered both about how the mammalian brain performs computations and about the final common path for movement control. The combination of these neurobiological data, what we know about the behavioral properties of mammalian decision making, and what we know about the logic of choice imposes serious constraints on any algorithmic model of this process. This chapter reviews the major features of any model that respects these constraints. Much of the specific neurobiological data that shapes our understanding of the structure of the final common path comes from studies of monkeys making eye movements. The general computational principles of the model presented in the chapter employs central features of any mammalian brain, but many of the specific computational details of the choice-making architecture are extrapolations from studies of the saccadic system.

This chapter presents a balanced perspective on the relationship between functional information processing and neurobiological approaches to the understanding of human learning and memory. It argues that neurobiological information, including information from functional neuroimaging, is essential in informing functional theory, but that functional theory is in turn essential to increasing the specificity of theorizing concerning how representations and processes of learning and memory relate to their neurobiological substrates.

This chapter reviews neurobiological correlates of visual pattern masking at cortical levels in primates. A first part is devoted to evidence from animal studies. The review includes investigations of metacontrast and pattern masking in area V1, para- and metacontrast in area V4, backward pattern masking in frontal eye field and in temporal cortex. The second part of the chapter reviews evidence from human studies and includes discussions of studies using the Visual Evoked Potential (VEP) and the functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) techniques.

Pathological altruism is a construct describing the willingness of an individual to place the needs of others above him- or herself to the point of causing harm, whether physical, psychological, or both, to the purported altruist. Codependency can be viewed as a form of pathological altruism. The study of codependency has been hampered by limited agreement as to what it is, whether it even exists, and a lack of validated psychometric instruments to study it. This chapter suggests codependency is best viewed as a behavior and not a diagnosis, facilitated by the inability to tolerate negative affect. This chapter will review the concept of codependency, comment on its roots in empathy and altruism, explore its potential neurobiological, genetic, and evolutionary basis, and make suggestions for future research.

Unique insights into understanding gene–brain–behaviour relationships could be obtained from genetically based neurodevelopmental disorders, especially Williams Syndrome (WS), which is useful in investigating the genetic and neurocognitive systems underlying social-emotional behaviour, owing to the striking social phenotype related to the disorder. In the past 20 years, there has been a significant development in the study of the cognitive-affective mechanisms underlying the empathy, hypersociability, and unusual attention to people and emotional responsiveness characterizing the phenotype. However, little is known as to the neurobiological systems that influence the behavioural patterns distinguishing WS from other disorders. Very few studies have also been done to examine the changes in the social phenotype of the disorder due to maturational or contextual influences at various developmental levels.

The growing interest in the biological mechanisms subserving social behaviour in humans and animals has been fuelled partly by techniques and assays for monitoring or recording nervous activity becoming more sophisticated and accessible. The use of new technologies and improved old ones has caused a surge in research studies investigating how the different aspects of social behaviour are related and how a great number of physiological systems work. Developmental scientists have started to apply some of the new neurobiological techniques to deal with fundamental questions of human development. One important aspect of this work is the possible adoption of converging methods, integrating findings obtained from the scope of functional neuroimaging and electrophysiology with results from comparative, computational, and neuropsychological approaches. The renewed and growing interest in the biology of social behaviour is also brought about by the increasing acceptance of studying biological mechanisms and the surfacing of cognitive neuroscience.

Temperamental exuberance has been studied at various levels of analysis, but there is a lack of a single framework that could be used in understanding the complex construct. This chapter, therefore, aims to introduce some research areas where progress is happening and to investigate how this progress could aid in explaining contemporary perspectives of this behavioural phenotype, concentrating on four broad issues. It includes a review of current works trying to conceptualize exuberance in the developmental literature, a discussion on neurobiological models with possible explanatory value, and contextualization of the models using the behavioural descriptions of exuberance in the child-development literature. Indications of correlations between exuberance and behaviour disorders in children are analyzed. Works associating stress with exuberance are reviewed to understand whether exuberance is something more serious than just low behavioural inhibition and whether the phenotype is actually related to increased stress in specific environments.

This chapter discusses the factors that affect a new mother's initial responses to her offspring and how she is changed by those responses, taking into account the mechanisms underlying maternal behaviour, with the focus on physiological mechanisms and the different behavioural systems they activate. The factors controlling the expression of maternal behaviour are examined, comparing those in altricial and precocial species with those in humans. For both humans and animals, findings show that mechanisms in both the new mother and the offspring stimulate a kind of bond that meets the needs of the offspring and the social organization to which they belong. Maternal behaviour is seen to require prior changes in other behavioural systems, particularly in the affective, perceptual, and learning systems of the animal, and the emotionality of both animals and humans. Without these changes, the mother expresses inadequate, abnormal, or no maternal behaviour.

This chapter reviews current knowledge about the brain mechanisms involved in music perception, music production, and music learning. It argues that a basic understanding of the enormously complex neurobiological processes that underlie the musician's training and performance will eventually stimulate new insights into the practice and theory of music education. So far, the results of laboratory experiments have been, by necessity, restricted to very limited aspects of music making. Consequently, the brain mechanisms that underlie the rich universe of accomplished musicianship are mostly still inaccessible to brain research. To understand neural substrates of music performance it is first necessary to understand some basic neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. The chapter introduces essential general information for musical readers.

This chapter discusses relevant psychological and neurobiological theories on emotion and emotional memory. It also illustrates how neuroimaging research has validated and extended the animal models and has led to new insights into mechanisms of emotional memory in humans.

This chapter critically assesses current neurobiological models of attention and unilateral spatial neglect, particularly in relation to neuroimaging results acquired over the last decade. It highlights that these models do not account for significant discrepancies between lesion studies and neuroimaging results. It then reports a new experiment that clarifies some of these discrepancies and proposes a revision of current models. It is noted that lesions causing neglect in the frontal lobe do not match with frontal areas of activation during visuospatial attention; rather, they better match the location of regions mediating alerting/vigilance. Moreover, the current evidence supports a role for human anterior cingulate cortex (AC) in response evaluation and monitoring, and not stimulus selection or motivation. It is also shown that temporoparietal junction (TPJ) plays a critical role in alerting. The proposed model clarifies some of the discrepancies between neuropsychological studies of neglect and brain imaging studies of visuospatial attention, and provides novel information on the pathophysiology of neglect.