1,091 research outputs found
Functional Organization of Social Perception and Cognition in the Superior Temporal Sulcus
The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is considered a hub for social perception and cognition, including the perception of faces and human motion, as well as understanding others' actions, mental states, and language. However, the functional organization of the STS remains debated: Is this broad region composed of multiple functionally distinct modules, each specialized for a different process, or are STS subregions multifunctional, contributing to multiple processes? Is the STS spatially organized, and if so, what are the dominant features of this organization? We address these questions by measuring STS responses to a range of social and linguistic stimuli in the same set of human participants, using fMRI. We find a number of STS subregions that respond selectively to certain types of social input, organized along a posterior-to-anterior axis. We also identify regions of overlapping response to multiple contrasts, including regions responsive to both language and theory of mind, faces and voices, and faces and biological motion. Thus, the human STS contains both relatively domain-specific areas, and regions that respond to multiple types of social information.David & Lucile Packard FoundationNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research FellowshipNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (CCF-1231216
Using child-friendly movie stimuli to study the development of face, place, and object regions from age 3 to 12 years
Scanning young children while they watch short, engaging, commerciallyâproduced movies has emerged as a promising approach for increasing data retention and quality. Movie stimuli also evoke a richer variety of cognitive processes than traditional experiments, allowing the study of multiple aspects of brain development simultaneously. However, because these stimuli are uncontrolled, it is unclear how effectively distinct profiles of brain activity can be distinguished from the resulting data. Here we develop an approach for identifying multiple distinct subjectâspecific Regions of Interest (ssROIs) using fMRI data collected during movieâviewing. We focused on the test case of higherâlevel visual regions selective for faces, scenes, and objects. Adults (NÂ =â13) were scanned while viewing a 5.6âmin childâfriendly movie, as well as a traditional localizer experiment with blocks of faces, scenes, and objects. We found that just 2.7âmin of movie data could identify subjectâspecific face, scene, and object regions. While successful, movieâdefined ssROIS still showed weaker domain selectivity than traditional ssROIs. Having validated our approach in adults, we then used the same methods on movie data collected from 3 to 12âyearâold children (NÂ =â122). Movie response timecourses in 3âyearâold children's face, scene, and object regions were already significantly and specifically predicted by timecourses from the corresponding regions in adults. We also found evidence of continued developmental change, particularly in the faceâselective posterior superior temporal sulcus. Taken together, our results reveal both early maturity and functional change in face, scene, and object regions, and more broadly highlight the promise of short, childâfriendly movies for developmental cognitive neuroscience
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 âTheory of Mindâ (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 5â11 year old children and n = 37 adults; Experiment 2: n = 76 neurotypical and n = 29 5â12 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
Donna Awatere on Whiteness in New Zealand: Theoretical Contributions and Contemporary Relevance
In June 2022, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern designated the US-based neofascist groups The Base and the Proud Boys as terrorist organisations. This designation marks one of the few times white supremacy entered the national political discourse in New Zealand. Discourses of whiteness are mostly theorised in the North American context. However, Donna Awatereâs 1984 examination of White Cultural Imperialism (WCI) in her book MÄori Sovereignty advanced an analysis of whiteness in New Zealand that has received limited scholarly attention and is essentially unexplored. This paper reintroduces Awatereâs conceptualisation of WCI. It offers core tenets of WCI and theoretical insights into contemporary discussions of white supremacy that move beyond the focus of individuals and groups to a broader national framework of New Zealand. Two interrelated features of WCI, as defined by Awatere, are the minimisation and normalisation of whiteness and white racial hostility â inherent features that maintain, protect, and reproduce the white institutionalised body as the primary beneficiary of Western European domination that will always thwart Indigenous sovereignty and equality. This paper concludes that Awatereâs articulation of WCI links whiteness in the New Zealand context to the broader network of global white supremacy that offers insight into contemporary criminal justice scholarship
Reduced neural selectivity for mental states in deaf children with delayed exposure to sign language
Early linguistic experience directly facilitates social development in childhood. Here, the authors reveal that children with delayed access to language show delayed development of selective responses in cortical regions involved in thinking about othersâ thoughts
Are all beliefs equal? Implicit belief attributions recruiting core brain regions of theory of mind
Humans possess efficient mechanisms to behave adaptively in social contexts. They ascribe goals and beliefs to others and use these for behavioural predictions. Researchers argued for two separate mental attribution systems: an implicit and automatic one involved in online interactions, and an explicit one mainly used in offline deliberations. However, the underlying mechanisms of these systems and the types of beliefs represented in the implicit system are still unclear. Using neuroimaging methods, we show that the right temporo-parietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, brain regions consistently found to be involved in explicit mental state reasoning, are also recruited by spontaneous belief tracking. While the medial prefrontal cortex was more active when both the participant and another agent believed an object to be at a specific location, the right temporo-parietal junction was selectively activated during tracking the false beliefs of another agent about the presence, but not the absence of objects. While humans can explicitly attribute to a conspecific any possible belief they themselves can entertain, implicit belief tracking seems to be restricted to beliefs with specific contents, a content selectivity that may reflect a crucial functional characteristic and signature property of implicit belief attribution
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