Neural correlates of naturalistic social cognition: brain-behavior relationships in healthy adults

Abstract

Being able to infer the thoughts, feelings and intentions of those around us is indispensable in order to function in a social world. Despite growing interest in social cognition and its neural underpinnings, the factors that contribute to successful mental state attribution remain unclear. Current knowledge is limited because the most widely used tasks suffer from two main constraints: (i) They fail to capture individual variability due to ceiling effects and (ii) they use highly simplistic, often artificial stimuli inapt to mirror real-world socio-cognitive demands. In the present study, we address these problems by employing complex depictions of naturalistic social interactions that vary in both valence (positive vs negative) and ambiguity (high vs low). Thirty-eight healthy participants (20 female) made mental state judgments while brain responses were obtained using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Accuracy varied based on valence and ambiguity conditions and women were more accurate than men with highly ambiguous social stimuli. Activity of the orbitofrontal cortex predicted performance in the high ambiguity condition. The results shed light on subtle differences in mentalizing abilities and associated neural activity.

The neuroscience of people watching: how the human brain makes sense of other people's encounters

“…55,56 Further work has revealed that interactions characterized by contingent rather than noncontingent actions elicit stronger pSTS activity 69 and that pSTS responses may be increased in response to negative rather than neutral interactions. 61,65 According to additional data, however, comparing negative and positive encounters does not necessarily result in differential pSTS activity, 59,77 suggesting that the region may respond to valenced actions per se rather than negativity in particular. To better understand the functional significance of the pSTS, however, the type of variations in TPEs that can modulate its activity require further investigation.…”

“…For example, comparing TPEs of positive and negative valence has mainly revealed contradictory results. Even though at least three studies have found enhanced DMPFC activity in response to negative compared with neutral or positive encounters, others have reported null findings or the opposite result. Recent work on the detection of intentional harm in human encounters indicates, however, that simply distinguishing between positive and negative encounters may not suffice to decipher meaningful neural responses.…”

“…This lack of understanding is largely due to the fact that existing neuroscientific studies on TPE processing vary substantially in their methods. In terms of stimuli, for instance, researchers have used various types of media to present TPEs over the years, ranging from still images to brief sequences of still images to dynamic video clips . Furthermore, still images have included color photographs, grayscale photographs, and black‐and‐white schematic drawings .…”

“…In contrast to the IFG, the role of the IPL during TPE processing is less well understood. Though some studies have reported increased IPL activity in response to TPEs of negative compared with neutral or positive valence, others have found no effect of valence or reported the opposite result (i.e., enhanced IPL activity toward positive relative to negative interactions). Interestingly, these conflicting findings may be related to another intriguing observation.…”

“…32 Aside from using various types of stimuli, existing neuroscientific studies on TPE processing have also differed substantially in terms of their experimental conditions of interest, including their socalled baseline condition. Whereas some scientists have compared the neural effects of TPEs with those elicited by nonsocial control displays, 59,72,73 others have contrasted TPEs and depictions of single individuals 11,12,74,75 or TPEs of jointly acting individuals with TPEs of independently acting individuals. 56,67,76 Beyond these three major lines of research, various subtypes of joint actions (i.e., interactions) have been pitched against one another.…”