Evolution of Social Predictive Brains?

discrimination and detection of biological motion (Neri et al., 2006; Manera et al., 2011). This “inverse relationship” between bottom-up perceptual input and top-down social information implies the presence of “social” forward (internally generated) models acting as top-down priors, which may be competing with other internal models for overall control, comparable to forward models of action (Wolpert and Miall, 1996). In accordance with this body of work, it would be legitimate to argue that either the evolution of at least some social cognitive processes such as “theory of mind” emerged through “cooptation” of predictive mechanisms or vice versa, as selection pressures on sophisticated abilities to predict and manipulate the behavior of con-specifics increased in early hominid environments that became more heavily reliant on social cooperation. The modulation of predictive mechanisms by social context could be explained by a prioritized attentional orientation toward social information (Driver et al., 1999), which would likely have had some adaptive evolutionary benefits. The increasing complexity of the social environment in primates and humans may have consequently had an impact on the development of fundamental predictive mechanisms, and therefore recruiting previously non-social cognitions and neural structures for social predictive functions. This notion could also be supported by the substantial overlap seen between brain areas implicated in the “predictive brain” (Bubic et al., 2010) and the “social brain” (AbuAkel and Shamay-Tsoory, 2011). These suggestions are compatible with the social brain hypothesis (Brothers, 1990; Dunbar, 1998). Indeed, Sallet et al. (2011) have recently shown that social network size and social status is correlated with gray matter A commentary on