Response patterns in the developing social brain are organized by social and emotion features and disrupted in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Adults and children recruit a specific network of brain regions when engaged in “Theory of Mind” (ToM) reasoning. Recently, fMRI studies of adults have used multivariate analyses to provide a deeper characterization of responses in these regions. These analyses characterize representational distinctions within the social domain, rather than comparing responses across preferred (social) and non-preferred stimuli. Here, we conducted opportunistic multivariate analyses in two previously collected datasets (Experiment 1: n = 20 5–11 year old children and n = 37 adults; Experiment 2: n = 76 neurotypical and n = 29 5–12 year old children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)) in order to characterize the structure of representations in the developing social brain, and in order to discover if this structure is disrupted in ASD. Children listened to stories that described characters' mental states (Mental), non-mentalistic social information (Social), and causal events in the environment (Physical), while undergoing fMRI. We measured the extent to which neural responses in ToM brain regions were organized according to two ToM-relevant models: 1) a condition model, which reflected the experimenter-generated condition labels, and 2) a data-driven emotion model, which organized stimuli according to their emotion content. We additionally constructed two control models based on linguistic and narrative features of the stories. In both experiments, the two ToM-relevant models outperformed the control models. The fit of the condition model increased with age in neurotypical children. Moreover, the fit of the condition model to neural response patterns was reduced in the RTPJ in children diagnosed with ASD. These results provide a first glimpse into the conceptual structure of information in ToM brain regions in childhood, and suggest that there are real, stable features that predict responses in these regions in children. Multivariate analyses are a promising approach for sensitively measuring conceptual and neural developmental change and individual differences in ToM.NSF (Award 1122374

How We Know It Hurts: Item Analysis of Written Narratives Reveals Distinct Neural Responses to Others' Physical Pain and Emotional Suffering

People are often called upon to witness, and to empathize with, the pain and suffering of others. In the current study, we directly compared neural responses to others' physical pain and emotional suffering by presenting participants (n = 41) with 96 verbal stories, each describing a protagonist's physical and/or emotional experience, ranging from neutral to extremely negative. A separate group of participants rated “how much physical pain”, and “how much emotional suffering” the protagonist experienced in each story, as well as how “vivid and movie-like” the story was. Although ratings of Pain, Suffering and Vividness were positively correlated with each other across stories, item-analyses revealed that each scale was correlated with activity in distinct brain regions. Even within regions of the “Shared Pain network” identified using a separate data set, responses to others' physical pain and emotional suffering were distinct. More broadly, item analyses with continuous predictors provided a high-powered method for identifying brain regions associated with specific aspects of complex stimuli – like verbal descriptions of physical and emotional events.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Office of Naval Research, grant number N000140910845

Know Thy Selves: Learning to Understand Oneself Increases the Ability to Understand Others

Understanding others’ feelings, intentions, and beliefs is a crucial social skill both for our personal lives and for meeting the challenges of a globalized world. Recent evidence suggests that the ability to represent and infer others’ mental states (Theory of Mind, ToM) can be enhanced by mental training in healthy adults. The present study investigated the role of training-induced understanding of oneself for the enhanced understanding of others. In a large-scale longitudinal study, two independent participant samples (N = 80 and N = 81) received a 3-month contemplative training. This training focused on perspective taking and was inspired by the Internal Family Systems model that conceives the self as being composed of a complex system of inner personality aspects. Specifically, participants practiced perspective taking on their own inner states by learning to identify and classify different inner personality parts. Results revealed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves—reflected in the number of different inner parts they could identify—predicted their improvements in high-level ToM performance over training. Especially the number of identified parts that were negatively valenced showed a strong relation with enhanced ToM capacities. This finding suggests a close link between getting better in understanding oneself and improvement in social intelligence

The association between transgender-related fiction and transnegativity: Transportation and intergroup anxiety as mediators

Fictional narratives can serve as an indirect contact strategy when direct contact between two groups is not feasible. This study investigated whether exposing cisgender individuals to transgender-related fiction was associated with reduced transnegativity. Two emotion-related mediators were examined in this relationship: transportation into the story (proximal to fiction exposure) and intergroup anxiety (proximal to contact theory). Cisgender participants (N = 84) viewed or read stories involving transgender characters or read a science article. Those who encountered transgender characters reported lower transnegativity than those who read the control story. Transportation into the story and intergroup anxiety serially mediated this relationship. The findings suggest conditions under which a fictional story can expand an audience’s social world and thereby serve as a strategy for prejudice reduction

Examining Measurement Invariance of the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief (PQ-B) Across Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Race/Ethnicity, and Generational Status in Young Adults Across the United States

Early detection of emerging psychosis is among the most important factors for minimizing transition to psychosis by reducing the duration of untreated psychosis, a predictor of psychosis trajectory. Early detection is particularly important for minoritized populations, some of which have demonstrated elevated risk for psychosis, longer periods of untreated psychosis, and worse psychosis outcomes overall. A method for early detection is utilization of self-report measures of psychotic-like experiences, like the widely used prodromal questionnaire-brief (PQ-B). These measures are easy, scalable, cost-effective, and can help identify individuals at highest need for early intervention services. However, these measures, including the PQ-B, were developed and validated in largely White samples and without obvious consideration for minoritized populations or social context. Therefore, it is unclear whether the PQ-B accurately measures psychosis-risk in diverse groups. Inaccuracies in these measures may under- or over-pathologize minority experiences and potentially impact who is screened for early intervention services. Thus, we examined measurement invariance of the PQ-B across gender identity, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and US generational status among 2000+ young adults across the US

Identification of latent classes based on self-perception of racial identity and sexual orientation and associations with psychopathology symptoms.

We are using identity-based measures, particularly those related to sexual and racial/ethnic identities, to identify classes that may differentially predict mental health outcomes with Latent Profile Analysis (LPA)

Social Victimization, Default Mode Network Connectivity, and Psychotic-Like Experiences in Adolescents

Background and Hypothesis: Social victimization (SV), the experience of physical and/or psychological harm arising from adverse social experiences (e.g., bullying), has been associated with psychotic-like experiences (PLE). Similarly, abnormal resting state neural connectivity has been linked to increased SV and PLE. Yet, research has not directly examined the connections between SV, neural connectivity, and PLE. We test whether SV increases PLE through neural networks central to socio-affective processes, specifically the default mode (DMN) and salience networks (SAN) in a diverse nationwide sample of adolescents. Study Design: Utilizing two-year follow-up data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we use structural equation modeling to examine if a latent SV factor is associated with PLE, whether this association was mediated by the DMN and/or SAN, and whether these findings were consistent across three racial groups (Black, Hispanic, and White). Study Results: The latent SV factor (peer victimization, discrimination) was significantly associated with PLE outcomes. Simultaneous mediation analyses indicated that the DMN mediated the SV-PLE association (accounting for approximately 1% of the association) while the SAN did not. Multigroup testing found that while Black and Hispanic adolescents experienced SV differently than their White peers, the DMN mediated the effect of SV on PLE for all racial groups. Conclusions: These cross-sectional results highlight the importance SV, and its potential impact on social cognitive neural networks, for psychosis risk. Future work is needed to evaluate putative causal associations and the other factors that explain variance in adolescent PLE