The possible uniqueness of social stimuli constitutes a key topic for cognitive neuroscience. Growing evidence highlights graded contributions to their semantic processing by the anterior temporal lobe (ATL), where the omni-category response displayed by its ventrolateral sector might reflect the integration of information relayed from other regions. Among these, the superior polar ATL was specifically associated with representing social concepts. However, most previous studies neglected the close relationship between social and emotional semantic features, which might confound interpreting the degree of overlap vs. specificity of social and emotional conceptual processing. We addressed this issue via two activation-likelihood-estimation meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies reporting brain structures associated with processing social or emotional concepts. Alongside a common involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, we found social and emotional concepts to be specifically associated with lateral temporal areas (including the superior polar ATL) and the amygdala, respectively. These results support the specialization of distinct sectors of the fronto-temporo-limbic circuitry for processing social vs. emotional concepts, and the integration of their output in medial prefrontal regions underlying the regulation of social behavior. These results pave the way for further studies addressing the neural bases of conceptual knowledge, its impairment after fronto-temporal brain damage, and the effect of rehabilitative interventions targeting its main functional modules.

社会刺激的可能独特性构成了认知神经科学的一个关键主题。越来越多的证据强调了前颞叶 (ATL) 对其语义处理的分级贡献，其中其腹外侧部分显示的全类别反应可能反映了从其他区域传递的信息的整合。其中，优越的极地 ATL 与代表社会概念特别相关。然而，大多数先前的研究都忽略了社会和情感语义特征之间的密切关系，这可能会混淆解释社会和情感概念加工的重叠程度与特异性。我们通过对神经影像学研究报告与处理社会或情感概念相关的大脑结构的两项激活似然估计元分析来解决这个问题。除了腹内侧前额叶皮层的共同参与，我们发现社会和情感概念分别与外侧颞区（包括上极 ATL）和杏仁核特别相关。这些结果支持额颞叶边缘回路的不同部分的专业化，用于处理社会与情感概念，并将它们的输出整合到作为社会行为调节基础的内侧前额叶区域。这些结果为进一步研究解决概念性知识的神经基础、额颞叶脑损伤后的损伤铺平了道路，