The Brain of Presence: A Foundational Framework for Social Neuroscience

Resumen de los autores

The concept of a “social brain” has been highly productive in social neuroscience, helping identify neural systems involved in social cognition. Yet this framework typically defines sociality at the level of social cognition, even though such processes unfold within presence-sensitive operating conditions established by a more basic operation: the registration of others’ presence. This review asks where sociality begins. I argue that social presence—the mere presence, observation, or represented availability of others—should be treated as a foundational condition of brain function rather than as a secondary aspect of social context. I revisit the origins and limits of the social-brain framework, then review evidence from social facilitation and inhibition showing that the presence of conspecifics alters performance across tasks and species. I next examine neural findings demonstrating that social presence modulates neuronal recruitment, large-scale network organization, and synaptic efficacy across scales. Together, these findings suggest that social presence is not simply an external modifier of cognition, but a fundamental condition shaping how cognition and brain function are organized. Sociality can thus be understood as embedded in the presence-shaped organization of brain function across levels, calling for a rethinking of how it is conceptualized in the brain. This claim is best understood as chronological and architectural together rather than as a choice between the two: presence is continuously estimated, in the manner of a predictive-brain process, ahead of the social-cognitive operations it organizes, which is why models of cognition and brain function that omit it remain structurally incomplete. I distinguish this proposal from second-person neuroscience and from definitions of social cognition that already invoke represented presence, and I outline falsifiable predictions, including tests of discriminant validity, to evaluate its explanatory value relative to existing constructs.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Boussaoud, D. (2026). The Brain of Presence: A Foundational Framework for Social Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tpnze_v2