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Social recognition memory in animals is essential for social hierarchy, mate and offspring recognition, territorial defense, interspecies recognition, and for the general establishment and maintenance of groups ( Ferguson et al., 2002 Jacobs et al., 2016).
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Memory for individual conspecifics is not only necessary to engage in meaningful relationships but is also required to express appropriate behavioral responses based on previous encounters ( van der Kooij and Sandi, 2012 Jacobs et al., 2016). The ability to recognize a familiar versus novel individual is the foundation on which social relationships are built. For the purpose of this review, we will predominantly focus on the social recognition aspect of social memory. Social memory reflects different cognitive and behavioral processes, such as the ability to recognize a familiar or novel conspecific, commonly referred to as social recognition, or the ability to learn from others, commonly referred to as social learning ( van der Kooij and Sandi, 2012). One of the processes that is paramount to the structure and stability of relationship networks that define societies is that of social memory ( Kogan et al., 2000). This field of study is comprised of three levels of interaction: the social level, which focuses on the motivational and social factors that influence behavior and experience the cognitive level, which focuses on the information-processing mechanisms that contribute to social-level processes and the neural level, which focuses on the role of various brain regions and their involvement in cognitive level processing ( Ochsner and Lieberman, 2001). First described by Cacioppo and Berntson (1992), this field was developed to study mental and behavioral processes using an integrative, multimodal approach. It aims to explore the relationship between cognitive processes and behavior in a social context. Social cognitive neuroscience is a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of research that aims to delineate the “why” and “how” of interactions between individuals.