One of the innovations of the DSM-III in the late 1970s was to separate autism spectrum disorders from schizophrenia into different diagnostic categories. Although this distinction has many practical advantages, it is currently being reconsidered in view of emerging evidence about common neurobiological processes in both disorders. Impairment in social cognition is a cardinal feature of the clinical presentation of both ASD and SZ. The term social cognition refers to a complex set of processes subserving adaptive social interaction which depend on ����theory of mind����, or in other words, the ability to make correct attributions of the mental states of others. Theory of mind broadly refers to three types of attributions: attribution of epistemic mental states, attribution of intentions or motivations and attribution of affective states. A range of tasks have been developed to map on these core mentalising domains. Torin 1 Facial emotion recognition relates to the ability to infer the emotional state of others, and although it measures a core dimension of ToM, it is usually mentioned separately. We will follow this convention here for ease of reference to the existing literature. Similarly, we will use the term ToM to collectively refer to tasks of epistemic or intention attribution and tasks that involve more than one ToM domain. Neurobiological models of social cognition implicate an extended neural network in processing social stimuli. Regions most consistently involved are the medial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, ventral temporal regions around the superior temporal sulcus, occipitotemporal regions, the temporoparietal junction, and limbic structures, especially the amygdala. These regions are interconnected and have additional connectivity with somatosensory cortices and subcortical structures such as the thalamus. There is emerging consensus for relative FG-4592 HIF inhibitor regional specialization within this extended network. Involvement of the medial PFC in social cognition is elicited by multiple tasks that require conscious attribution or judgment of mental states, dispositional traits or intentions of one��s self or of others. Engagement of the ventrolateral PFC relates primarily to the contextual or social appropriateness of responses to social cues. Regions surrounding the TPJ have systematically been associated with social cognition tasks requiring participants to ����think about other people��s thoughts���� or in other words, to take a third person perspective about others�� affective or cognitive states. Activation in regions around the STS has been reliably associated with salient biological movement, including changeable characteristics of human facial features, which can be used to infer affective or intentional states. Similarly, somatosensory cortices are thought to contribute to social cognition by invoking or ����mirroring���� internal representations of affective states.