English: Brain areas that participate in social processing. A simple classification of brain areas involved in social processing differentiates regions that participate in four related processes. The first is the perception of basic social stimuli, such as biological motions (V5), part of the body (extra-striate body area, EBA), and faces (fusiform face area, FFA). Another process includes emotional and motivational appraisal, where the amygdala (AMY), the anterior insula (AI), the subgenual and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), as well as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) participate.
These cortical structures are in interaction with subcortical structures as the ventral striatum (VS), and the hypothalamus (HTH).
These structures in turn interact with other regions which participate in the goal-directed, adaptive behaviors, and the categorization processes, such as the dorsolateral (dlPFC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the ACC anterior cingulate cortex. Finally for social attribution, areas like the ventral premotor cortex (vPMC), the superior temporal sulcus (STS), the AI, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and the precuneus (PC) participate in more automatic, bottom-up inferences of other people’s mental states; whereas structures like the mPFC and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) are involved in more cognitive theory of mind skills.