**Acknowledgements**

related with the gray matter volume of the prefrontal cortex. In particular, the volume of the dlPFC was positively correlated with one's fantasy scores and the volume of ACC was positively associated with one's perspective taking scores. The functional neuroimaging further demonstrated that the activation in mPFC for fiction reading relative to nonfiction reading, positively correlated with reader's fantasizing scores [96]. Neurophysiological studies (such as electroencephalograms (EEG)/event-related potentials (ERPs)) showed that the words embedded in sentences with under-informative use of scalar quantifiers (e.g., *some people have neck*s) elicited an increased N400 [97], an ERP effect which are considered to be the product of the underlying sources in inferior frontal cortex, than the words informative use of some [87]. This N400 enhancement was only observed in those showing higher pragmatic abilities (measured by Autism-Spectrum Quotient Questionnaire) but not in those with lower abilities [97]. Other studies also observed that those with higher empathic ability demonstrated larger N400 response in spoken sentences which contained words mismatching the speaker identity (e.g., *I want a teddy bear* in a man's voice) or larger late positivity effect in sentences that required the resolution of ambiguous referential representations based on a social context (e.g., a respectful second-person pronoun that is used in a directly quoted utterance that was addressed by a lower-status speaker to two potential addressees one of whom was of higher status [98, 99]). These neural mechanisms associated with pragmatic processing were either

To summarize, latest emergent literatures suggests a promising trend that researchers in language cognitive neuroscience are growingly attracted to address topic relevant to the neural correlates underlying social language processing. Despite the exciting new contributions in the relationship between neural networks underlying mentalizing/ToM, social inference, executive function, action, cognitive empathy and the understanding of different forms of nonliteral language, speech act, affection-charged literary, and pragmatic forms, it is still at the very beginning to characterize the precise role of prefrontal cortex in language communication in social contexts. More works taking advantage of the latest advancements in neuroimaging, neuropsychological testing, and even neurostimulation (transcranial magnetic/ direct-current stimulation) should be facilitated to enlighten this new line of research in the broad context of neuropragmatics and cognitive neuroscience of human communication.

One future perspective is to examine the functional coupling between prefrontal regions and other parts of the brain that support the social inference via linguistic cues (e.g., vocal cues [100]) and the individual differences that modulate the strength of the functional coupling. Despite growing recent evidence with behavioral measures showing that language communication is deeply grounded in sociocultural conventions [84], few neuroimaging studies have dedicated to how culturally related linguistic and speech cues (e.g., linguistic accent) can contribute to the understanding of the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in perceiving sociocultural groups [100]. Another related question is how the knowledge regarding prefrontal cortex can illuminate the neural underpinnings of the socio-communicative deficits in

absent or altered in those with lower empathic ability.

**7. Conclusion**

76 Prefrontal Cortex

Dr. Xiaoming Jiang is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities from Tongji University.
