Differences and commonalities in the judgment of causality in physical and social contexts: an fMRI study.

Understanding cause and effect is a fundamental aspect of human cognition. When shown videos of simple two-dimensional shapes colliding, humans experience one object causing the other to move, e.g.

Neural correlates of causality judgment in physical and social context--the reversed effects of space and time.

The perception of causal relationships is crucial to understanding and interacting with our physical and social environment. However, whether the same or different neural processes are involved in perceiving physical and social causality is unknown. Therefore, this study is focused on commonalities and differences in the neural correlates of causality perception in both contexts.