THE SOCIAL BRAIN
A revolution... perhaps incomplete
The concept of the social brain has profoundly transformed neuroscience. It has shown that our emotions, decisions, and behaviors depend on others — that the brain is not an isolated organ.
This revolution is real. But it may have identified sociality somewhat late in the human experience.
Because in most classical models, sociality emerges when the brain engages in elaborate forms of interaction: understanding others, interpreting intentions, communicating, cooperating, sharing complex emotions. Empathy, theory of mind, attachment, social cognition: all these processes are now well documented.
But this way of framing the problem could leave something in the shadows.
Because even before interaction, even before communication, sometimes even before any explicit relationship, the brain already seems sensitive to the presence of others.
This idea leads to a surprising question:
How could such an ancient, robust and reproducible phenomenon as social facilitation have remained relatively peripheral in our way of thinking about the social brain?
For more than a century, research on social facilitation has shown that the mere presence of others can already modify attention, vigilance, effort, and performance on a wide variety of tasks.
And yet, this phenomenon has often remained on the periphery of major theoretical models of social cognition — as if the question of presence were merely a contextual phenomenon.
The Brain of Presence project does not call into question the Social Brain.
It follows directly from it. But it explores another possibility.
What if social interaction began before the interaction itself?
From this perspective, presence does not yet designate the relationship. It designates something more fundamental: the fact that another potentially relevant organism is there — or could be there, with more or less certainty.
This nuance may seem subtle, but it could profoundly change our understanding of the human brain.
Presence is not a context in which the brain functions. It is a continuous condition in which it develops, organizes itself, stabilizes — and sometimes repairs itself.
Before the relationship, before the interaction, even before words: there is presence. And perhaps that is where everything begins.