SARAH-JAYNE BLAKEMORE
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
University College London

Bringing the Brain into Social Interaction

Essays in Social Neuroscience
By David J. Buller. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 552 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $18.95.

Social neuroscience is a new but rapidly expanding field. Since its emergence in the early 1990s, interest in the biological underpinnings of social behavior has burgeoned. In addition to numerous recent books and several special issues of biological journals, two new journals are dedicated to social neuroscience (Social Neuroscience and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience). Although it is a young discipline, social neuroscience builds on a variety of well-established fields including social, developmental, and cognitive psychology, genetics, neurophysiology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuropsychology, and computer science. The extraordinary breadth of the field is portrayed in a recently published book, Essays in Social Neuroscience, edited by John T. Cacioppo and Gary G. Bernston.