For instance, the psychological underpinnings

of “depression” in humans may lie in social emotions (eg, envy and a following sense of inferiority or impotence) that are arguably primitive to depression. The future challenge will be to determine the degree to which animals that appear to undergo social emotions (eg, the Capuchin monkey) including envy,52 develop depression as a result of being placed in envy-generating conditions. A critical emotion experienced during the depressive illness is sadness, an emotion typically construed as “basic,” 53 but which in Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical humans has a large social component, both in its causes (eg, loss of a loved one) and in its consequences (eg, guilt for not being able to maintain a certain social role as a result of being sad or depressed; for guilt as a social emotion see ref 54). Likewise, the fear experienced Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical by a mountain climber in potential danger has levels of social complexity that are unlikely

to be reached in mice. In addition to fearing his own end, the mountain climber anticipating a possible death is likely also to be scared of losing his spouse and children, of leaving them behind, alone and fatherless and exposed to dangers, of the financial Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical consequences of his death on them, of the emotional effects on his parents, and so on. He may simultaneously experience shame (another social emotion) and anger (perhaps towards his self) for having neglected what he thinks were routine safety measures. A human facing Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the possibility of ceasing

to exist very soon has emotions that encompass the inescapable social nature and interconnectedness of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical our species, and multiple levels of self-representation and projection. Therefore, it is legitimate to wonder in which way the literature on basic and social emotions in animals, as it is usually framed, is truly useful for an extended view of social cognition and understaging of normal and abnormal emotions in humans. Amisulpride Are animal models for psychiatry at this stage of research adequate for psychiatry practice? The brain rush: historical perspective In recent years, there has been an impetus towards understanding how social cognitive processes are “mapped” in the brain. Social neuroscience has used experimental paradigms borrowed from the social and cognitive sciences, studying for instance the perception of socially relevant stimuli (eg, facial recognition of identity [gender] and emotion; categorization [personality, identity, emotion]; CDK inhibitor discrimination [race]) but also decision-making and theory of mind. An extensive exposition of the brain mechanisms purported to subserve social cognitive processes is beyond the scope of this article (we refer instead to several excellent reviews).