社會神經科學為認知神經科學領域中一門新興的學科。過去三十年來，社會神經科學致力探求各種社會行為及情緒認知的生物學機制，並且結合跨領域學門(如生命科學及計算科學等)的概念及方法，開展相關理論及接續實務應用之革新轉譯。本次社會神經科學議程，首先由元智大學醫學研究所范揚騰教授提供情緒與社會認知行為的介紹，並鏈接古典和當代神經科學的發現實證，讓學員能更深入的認識社會神經科學關心的議題軸向。接續進階課程中，陽明交通大學鄭雅薇教授和臺北醫學大學陳澂毅教授以道德行為為主軸，深究其腦部神經學機轉和相關運作機制，並延伸評析個人態度特質對於道德決斷的影響，繼而提出特定基因型態(血清素調節基因)-腦部功能-外顯行為(情緒處理與道德行為)之三維因果模型。臺灣大學心理學系陳品豪教授則以計算神經科學研究途徑，重新探討腦部神經系統如何調控個體的情緒經驗及信任決策，並進一步釐清上開社會行為之本質及其各個複雜維度之影響脈絡。

Morality is central for humanity. It has been suggested that our memories of past events involving moral and immoral actions contribute to shaping a positive view of the self. But it remains unclear how individual variability in the self-attributed moral traits fosters/affects the present/or future moral behaviors. In two studies involving a total of 213 participants, we used an experimental perspective-taking paradigm, where participants mentally simulated agency for different moral actions (study-1), in which the results showed that the reaction times (RTs) of helping actions were faster than the RTs in neutral and harming actions, indicating the motivation to act in an intuitive and prosocial manner, and measured the fMRI activity while undergoing such intuitive prosocial actions in another sample (study-2). Individual variability among implicit social attitudes (sIAT scores) predicted quicker RTs when initiating helping actions, and explicit justice sensitivity (JSI) predicted higher warm-glow ratings after helping. Furthermore, the orbitofrontal cortex mediated sIAT–RTs association, while the right temporoparietal junction mediated the JSI–warm-glow linkage. These findings support the dynamic system framework of moral cognition, providing key knowledge on the neural underpinnings regarding individual variability for moral attitudes.

Computational social and affective neuroscience is an emerging interdisciplinary field, which utilizes computational methods to understand neural and psychological mechanisms underlying social and affective processes. In this talk, I will present two studies from my lab to demonstrate how this approach could advance our understanding about social psychological processes and affective experiences. In the first study, I will demonstrate how I can develop a brain-based model of trust in the context of economic exchange and use construct validation to characterize the psychological processes associated with this construct of trust. In the second study, I will explore how affective experiences are represented in the brain and if they are shared across individuals. Specifically, I explore variations in the construction of an affective experience during a naturalistic viewing paradigm based on subjective preferences in sociosexual desire and self-control using an intersubject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA). Across these two studies, I hope to show how taking a computational socio-affective neuroscience approach, combining experimental social psychology, affective science as well as computational methods can help to gain a better understanding of social psychological and affective processes.