Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years

Abstract

Human adults recruit distinct networks of brain regions to think about the bodies and minds of others. This study characterizes the development of these networks, and tests for relationships between neural development and behavioral changes in reasoning about others’ minds (‘theory of mind’, ToM). A large sample of children (n = 122, 3–12 years), and adults (n = 33), watched a short movie while undergoing fMRI. The movie highlights the characters’ bodily sensations (often pain) and mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions), and is a feasible experiment for young children. Here we report three main findings: (1) ToM and pain networks are functionally distinct by age 3 years, (2) functional specialization increases throughout childhood, and (3) functional maturity of each network is related to increasingly anti-correlated responses between the networks. Furthermore, the most studied milestone in ToM development, passing explicit false-belief tasks, does not correspond to discontinuities in the development of the social brain.

Examining the relationship between social cognition and neural synchrony during movies in children with and without autism

“…Nevertheless, long-term memory deficits have been reported in ASD; specifically, autistic individuals perform worse on episodic, but not semantic, memory tasks (Crane & Goddard, 2008;Lind, 2010) Contrary to our hypothesis, no meaningful differences in neural synchrony were found between the L-SRS and H-SRS groups. This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group.…”

“…This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group. Moreover, the measure of social cognition used by Richardson et al (2018) focused specifically on comprehension of a social narrative, which has many things in common with how people follow the plot of a movie.…”

Examining the relationship between social cognition and neural synchrony during movies in children with and without autism

“…Nevertheless, long-term memory deficits have been reported in ASD; specifically, autistic individuals perform worse on episodic, but not semantic, memory tasks (Crane & Goddard, 2008;Lind, 2010) Contrary to our hypothesis, no meaningful differences in neural synchrony were found between the L-SRS and H-SRS groups. This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group.…”

“…This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group. Moreover, the measure of social cognition used by Richardson et al (2018) focused specifically on comprehension of a social narrative, which has many things in common with how people follow the plot of a movie.…”

Neural correlates of theory-of-mind are associated with variation in children’s everyday social cognition

“…This suggests that our neural findings for ToM-modulated activity and connectivity (FB>FP) are not simply attributable to differences in condition difficulty. Notably, we did not find significant effects of age on activity or connectivity for FB>FP, in contrast to prior developmental studies (Gweon et al , 2012; Richardson et al , 2018; Xiao et al , 2019), although this may be due to the narrow age range we tested.…”

Exploring Nonlinear Dynamics In Brain Functionality Through Phase Portraits And Fuzzy Recurrence Plots

“…First, we discover that neural synchronization in most brain regions of the child is stronger than that of the adult under cartoon stimuli, and we suggest that can be a potential signature for explaining the reasons why children are more likely to watch cartoons than adults. Furthermore, the results also suggest that functional specialization increases throughout childhood, which is consistent with the original study [75]. However, the neural signals from children and adults still indeed share some similarities; for instance, all phase portraits are presented in limit-cycle-like patterns.…”

Examining the relationship between social cognition and neural synchrony during movies in children with and without autism

“…Nevertheless, long-term memory deficits have been reported in ASD; specifically, autistic individuals perform worse on episodic, but not semantic, memory tasks (Crane & Goddard, 2008;Lind, 2010) Contrary to our hypothesis, no meaningful differences in neural synchrony were found between the L-SRS and H-SRS groups. This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group.…”

“…This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group. Moreover, the measure of social cognition used by Richardson et al (2018) focused specifically on comprehension of a social narrative, which has many things in common with how people follow the plot of a movie.…”

Neural correlates of theory-of-mind are associated with variation in children’s everyday social cognition

“…This suggests that our neural findings for ToM-modulated activity and connectivity (FB>FP) are not simply attributable to differences in condition difficulty. Notably, we did not find significant effects of age on activity or connectivity for FB>FP, in contrast to prior developmental studies (Gweon et al , 2012; Richardson et al , 2018; Xiao et al , 2019), although this may be due to the narrow age range we tested.…”

Exploring Nonlinear Dynamics In Brain Functionality Through Phase Portraits And Fuzzy Recurrence Plots

“…First, we discover that neural synchronization in most brain regions of the child is stronger than that of the adult under cartoon stimuli, and we suggest that can be a potential signature for explaining the reasons why children are more likely to watch cartoons than adults. Furthermore, the results also suggest that functional specialization increases throughout childhood, which is consistent with the original study [75]. However, the neural signals from children and adults still indeed share some similarities; for instance, all phase portraits are presented in limit-cycle-like patterns.…”

Examining the relationship between social cognition and neural synchrony during movies in children with and without autism

“…Nevertheless, long-term memory deficits have been reported in ASD; specifically, autistic individuals perform worse on episodic, but not semantic, memory tasks (Crane & Goddard, 2008;Lind, 2010) Contrary to our hypothesis, no meaningful differences in neural synchrony were found between the L-SRS and H-SRS groups. This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group.…”

“…This contrasts with the results of Richardson et al, (2018) who found that social cognition in typically-developing children was related to the degree of inter-subject correlation within the ToM network during movie-watching. One potential reason for this difference is that Richardson et al, (2018) calculated inter-subject correlation based on how similar each child's time course was to a group of adults watching the same movie, whereas in the current study, inter-subject correlation was calculated by correlating each participant's time course to the mean of their own group. Moreover, the measure of social cognition used by Richardson et al (2018) focused specifically on comprehension of a social narrative, which has many things in common with how people follow the plot of a movie.…”

Neural correlates of theory-of-mind are associated with variation in children’s everyday social cognition

“…This suggests that our neural findings for ToM-modulated activity and connectivity (FB>FP) are not simply attributable to differences in condition difficulty. Notably, we did not find significant effects of age on activity or connectivity for FB>FP, in contrast to prior developmental studies (Gweon et al , 2012; Richardson et al , 2018; Xiao et al , 2019), although this may be due to the narrow age range we tested.…”

Exploring Nonlinear Dynamics In Brain Functionality Through Phase Portraits And Fuzzy Recurrence Plots

“…First, we discover that neural synchronization in most brain regions of the child is stronger than that of the adult under cartoon stimuli, and we suggest that can be a potential signature for explaining the reasons why children are more likely to watch cartoons than adults. Furthermore, the results also suggest that functional specialization increases throughout childhood, which is consistent with the original study [75]. However, the neural signals from children and adults still indeed share some similarities; for instance, all phase portraits are presented in limit-cycle-like patterns.…”