Social Neuroscience and Public Health

Book excerpt: The field of public health is primarily concerned with understanding and improving physical health from a large group perspective (i.e., communities and whole populations). The field of social neuroscience, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with examining brain-behavior relationships that unfold in a social context. Both of these are rapidly developing fields of inquiry, and their boundaries have only recently begun to overlap. This book discusses collaborative research findings at the intersection of social neuroscience and public health that promise to fundamentally change the way scientists, public health practitioners, and the general public view physical health within the larger social context. Eighteen chapters are organized under the following major sections: cognition and health outcomes; neuroscientific aspects of health communication; health behavior and the neurobiology of self-regulation; neurobiological processes in health decision making; ecological and social context; neuroscience methods; and future directions.