Parallel Systems for Social and Spatial Reasoning Within the Brain's Apex Network

Explore the cognitive and neural architecture of core reasoning systems for understanding people and places in this 46-minute conference talk. Delve into a novel theoretical framework proposing separate but parallel systems for internal models of people and places, both in cognitive structure and neural machinery. Examine how these systems interact with the medial temporal lobe declarative memory system to update models of familiar people and places. Analyze the results of a human fMRI experiment testing foundational predictions of this framework, involving visual perception, semantic judgment, and episodic simulation tasks. Investigate the evolutionary origins of these systems through fMRI responses in nonhuman primates. Gain insights into the cognitive and neural architecture supporting human social understanding and its potential emergence from existing cortical systems for spatial cognition and long-term memory.

Introduction
Storytime
Core cognitive systems
The apex network
Counterarguments
Arguments
Theories of Mind
Connections to the hippocampus
Methods
Visual task
episodic task
evolution
specialization
anatomical organization
functional connectivity
conclusions