"If social intelligence were a random application of our general intelligence, we would expect to see the same brain regions associated with both kinds of intelligence. That would be a sensible story if it were true, but it isn’t. The brain regions reliably associated with general intelligence and its related cognitive abilities, like working memory and reasoning, tend to be on the outer (or lateral) surface of the brain, whereas thinking about other people and oneself utilizes mostly medial (or midline) regions of the brain.
"Moreover, neural networks that support social and nonsocial thinking often work at cross-purposes—much like the two ends of a neural seesaw. If we look at the brain when a person isn’t being asked to do anything in particular, we see the social cognition network turned on. Typically, the more this network turns on, the more the general cognition network responsible for other nonsocial kinds of thinking turns off...."
http://www.sciencefriday.com/blogs/10/18/2013/are-we-wired-for-social-relationships.html
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