Social Neuroscience Progress and Implications for Mental Health

ABSTRACT—Social neuroscience is a new, interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems im-plement social processes and behavior. Social neuroscience capitalizes on biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social behavior, and it uses social and behavioral constructs and data to inform and refine the-ories of neural organization and function.We focus here on the progress and potential of social neuroscience in the area of mental health. Research in social neuroscience has grown dramatically in recent years. Among themost active areas of research we found are brain-imaging studies in normal children and adults; animal models of social be-havior; studies of stroke patients; imaging studies of psy-chiatric patients; and research on social determinants of peripheral neural, neuroendocrine, and immunologica