Every individual makes a difference: A trinity derived from linking individual brain morphometry, connectivity and mentalising ability

Abstract

Mentalising ability, indexed as the ability to understand others' beliefs, feelings, intentions, thoughts, and traits, is a pivotal and fundamental component of human social cognition. However, considering the multifaceted nature of mentalising ability, little research has focused on characterising individual differences in different mentalising components. And even less research has been devoted to investigating how the variance in the structural and functional patterns of the amygdala and hippocampus, two vital subcortical regions of the 'social brain', are related to inter-individual variability in mentalising ability. Here, as a first step toward filling these gaps, we exploited inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA) to assess relationships between amygdala and hippocampal morphometry (surface-based multivariate morphometry statistics, MMS), connectivity (resting-state functional connectivity, rs-FC) and mentalising ability (interactive mentalisation questionnaire (IMQ) scores) across the participants (N = 24). In IS-RSA, we proposed a novel pipeline, i.e., computing patching and pooling operations-based surface distance (CPP-SD), to obtain a decent representation for high-dimensional MMS data. On this basis, We found significant correlations (i.e., second-order isomorphisms) between these three distinct modalities, indicating that a trinity existed in idiosyncratic patterns of brain morphometry, connectivity and mentalising ability. Notably, a region-related mentalising specificity emerged from these associations: self-self and self-other mentalisation are more related to the hippocampus, while other-self mentalisation shows a closer link with the amygdala. Furthermore, by utilising the dyadic regression analysis, we observed significant interactions such that subject pairs with similar morphometry had even greater mentalising similarity if they were also similar in rs-FC. Altogether, we demonstrated the feasibility and illustrated the promise in using IS-RSA to study individual differences, deepening our understanding of how individual brains give rise to their mentalising abilities.

Oxytocin enhances the triangular association among behavior, resting‐state, and task‐state functional connectivity

“…Although many studies have explored the consistency between individual differences at different levels (Beaty et al, 2018;Finn et al, 2015;Ovando-Tellez et al, 2022) including our previous studies (R. Wang et al, 2022;Li et al, 2023;Zhang et al, 2023), few studies have investigated the influence of neuropeptides, including OT, on this consistency. Our analysis, however, revealed a significant increase in the consistency between rsFC and tsFC under the influence of OT, suggesting heightened stability of FC across different states (Question 3).…”

Social anxiety, mentalizing and social distance preference: A preliminary psychometric evaluation

“…Mentalization plays a crucial role in shaping social interactive behaviors (Li et al, 2023;Merchant, Alkire & Redcay, 2022). In the current study, we aimed to assess the relationship between mentalization traits and abilities of individuals in various interactive contexts, concentrating on the association between social anxiety, psychometric traits, and distance preference.…”

“…Future work can implement social interactive tasks from the 3-D view, which has higher ecological validity and mimics real-life scenarios (Schafer & Schiller, 2018). Additionally, neuroimaging data is essential for related brain function and structure and individual difference in social interactive behaviors (Gaebler et al, 2013;Pittig et al, 2013;Wen et al, 2018;Li et al, 2023). Based on this perspective, we encourage future work combining social navigation paradigm, neuroimaging, and physiological recordings for more exploration.…”

Oxytocin enhances the triangular association among behavioral performance, resting state, and task-state functional connectivity

“…Our research demonstrates that OT affects the similarity between different modalities rather than a single modality (only behavior or brain activity). Although many studies have explored the consistency between individual differences in different modalities [38, 45, 49], including our previous studies [74, 75, 76], few studies have investigated the influence of neuropeptides, including OT, on this consistency. Mental diseases are also closely related to social abilities and individual differences [77].…”