Organization of the Social Brain in Macaques and Humans

Human social life has changed dramatically in the past 100 years, as first advances in transport and later the Internet allowed us to interact with a much greater and more diverse group of people. As a result, even the term “social networks” has a profound new meaning in the 21st century. The human species is now more connected than ever, and we live in a world in which, for better or worse, we can communicate our thoughts and intentions to vast numbers of our conspecifics, instantly. Yet while the apps behind this revolution are upgraded each year, the neural hardware that supports social behavior evolves over millennia. This chapter will explore the evidence that our social brain and the brains of our less-technology-savvy cousins may be surprisingly similar.