Look at this: the neural correlates of initiating and responding to bids for joint attention

When engaging in joint attention, one person directs another person's attention to an object (Initiating Joint Attention, IJA), and the second person's attention follows (Responding to Joint Attention, RJA). As such, joint attention must occur within the context of a social interaction. This ability is critical to language and social development; yet the neural bases for this pivotal skill remain understudied. This paucity of research is likely due to the challenge in acquiring functional MRI data during a naturalistic, contingent social interaction. To examine the neural bases of both IJA and RJA we implemented a dual-video set-up that allowed for a face-to-face interaction between subject and experimenter via video during fMRI data collection. In each trial, participants either followed the experimenter's gaze to a target (RJA) or cued the experimenter to look at the target (IJA). A control condition, solo attention (SA), was included in which the subject shifted gaze to a target while the experimenter closed her eyes. Block and event-related analyses were conducted and revealed common and distinct regions for IJA and RJA. Distinct regions included the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for RJA and intraparietal sulcus and middle frontal gyrus for IJA (as compared to SA). Conjunction analyses revealed overlap in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) for IJA and RJA (as compared to SA) for the event analyses. Functional connectivity analyses during a resting baseline suggest joint attention processes recruit distinct but interacting networks, including social-cognitive, voluntary attention orienting, and visual networks. This novel experimental set-up allowed for the identification of the neural bases of joint attention during a real-time interaction and findings suggest that whether one is the initiator or responder, the dMPFC and right pSTS, are selectively recruited during periods of joint attention

Spontaneous mentalizing captures variability in the cortical thickness of social brain regions

Theory of mind (ToM)or thinking about the mental states of othersis a cornerstone of successful everyday social interaction. However, the brain bases of ToM are most frequently measured via explicit laboratory tasks that pose direct questions about mental states (e.g. In this story, what does Steve think Julia believes?). Neuroanatomical measures may provide a way to explore the brain bases of individual differences in more naturalistic everyday mentalizing. In the current study, we examined the relation between cortical thickness and spontaneous ToM using the novel Spontaneous Theory of Mind Protocol (STOMP), which measures participants spontaneous descriptions of the beliefs, emotions and goals of characters in naturalistic videos. We administered standard ToM tasks and the STOMP to young adults (aged 18-26 years) and collected structural magnetic resonance imaging data from a subset of these participants. The STOMP produced robust individual variability and was correlated with performance on traditional ToM tasks. Further, unlike the traditional ToM tasks, STOMP performance was related to cortical thickness for a set of brain regions that have been functionally linked to ToM processing. These findings offer novel insight into the brain bases of variability in naturalistic mentalizing performance, with implications for both typical and atypical populations

Amygdala Volume and Social Reward in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Social interaction is a vital part of our everyday life and while there have been many studies that have helped elucidate both the neural components and extrinsic factors of these processes, it is still something that is not completely understood. This is especially relevant to those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as they are often characterized as having social processing deficits. Social cognition is one of the many functions associated with the limbic system, along with reward and emotion processing. Previous studies have shown that social interaction is rewarding and has been shown to activate regions in the limbic system (Warnell et al., 2017). The amygdala is a region included in social/reward circuitry within the limbic system, such that larger amygdala volumes have been associated with higher connectivity within these regions (Bickart et al., 2012). There have not been previous studies to our knowledge assessing how amygdala volume and social reward sensitivity may vary together, motivating the current study. Therefore, this study aims to assess how social reward relates to amygdala volume in 49 children (ASD = 21, TD = 31) aged 8 to 14 with and without a diagnosis of ASD. Social reward will be assessed using the Prosocial Interactions and Sociability subscales of the Social Reward Questionnaire (SRQ; Foulkes et al., 2014). Amygdala volumes were extracted using MRICloud (Mori et al., 2016). Amygdala size and SRQ subscale differences between groups will be analyzed using an analysis of covariance (controlling for total gray matter) and an independent samples t-test, respectively. A regression analysis will be conducted in order to examine amygdala and SRQ associations.University of Maryland; National Institute of Mental Health, Grant/Award Number R01-MH10744

Parental Mental State Talk and Associations with Children’s Mentalizing Ability in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

The current project investigated the relationship between parental mental state talk and their child's use of mentalizing language, in both children with typical development (TD) and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants included 40 parent-child dyads (20 ASD, 20 TD), and measured spontaneous/unprompted mentalizing tendencies in both parents and children using the Mind-Mindedness task and Triangles task, respectively. Results suggest that average amount of child mentalizing statements is not significantly associated with average parental mental state talk, and the relationship is not moderated by group status (ASD/TD). Though the current study rendered no significant associations, the links between parental and child mental state use in later childhood years, especially in the context of developmental disorders, represents a key area of exploration for future research

Read my lips! Perception of speech in noise by preschool children with autism and the impact of watching the speaker’s face

Adults and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders show greater difficulties comprehending speech in the presence of noise. Moreover, while neurotypical adults use visual cues on the mouth to help them understand speech in background noise, differences in attention to human faces in autism may affect use of these visual cues. No work has yet examined these skills in toddlers with ASD, despite the fact that they are frequently faced with noisy, multitalker environments.https://doi.org/10.1186/s11689-020-09348-

fMRI Meta-Analysis of Social Interaction via Joint Attention Paradigms

Poster presented at the Undergraduate Research Day, University of Maryland, College Park, MDJoint Attention (JA) is the sharing of attention on a common object or event by two or more people. JA is an important precursor to the development of social cognitive skills needed for more sophisticated forms of social interaction. The brain regions involved in JA during social interactive contexts are not well known because original studies of JA used tasks that are not interactive, such as engaging with the eye gaze of a static image outside of a social interactive context. Recent studies have used fMRI to understand the different brain regions associated with JA in interactive contexts, but there are inconsistent findings across studies. Therefore, this study uses meta-analytic methods to aggregate findings across JA studies using social interactive approaches to identify brain regions that are commonly activated

Live face-to-face interaction during fMRI: A new tool for social cognitive neuroscience

Cooperative social interaction is critical for human social development and learning. Despite the importance of social interaction, previous neuroimaging studies lack two fundamental components of everyday face-to-face interactions: contingent responding and joint attention. In the current studies, functional MRI data were collected while participants interacted with a human experimenter face-to-face via live video feed as they engaged in simple cooperative games. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in a live interaction with the experimenter (“Live”) or watched a video of the same interaction (“Recorded”). During the “Live” interaction, as compared to the Recorded conditions, greater activation was seen in brain regions involved in social cognition and reward, including the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), right superior temporal sulcus (rSTS), ventral striatum, and amygdala. Experiment 2 isolated joint attention, a critical component of social interaction. Participants either followed the gaze of the live experimenter to a shared target of attention (“Joint Attention”) or found the target of attention alone while the experimenter was visible but not sharing attention (“Solo Attention”). The right temporoparietal junction and right posterior STS were differentially recruited during Joint, as compared to Solo, attention. These findings suggest the rpSTS and rTPJ are key regions for both social interaction and joint attention. This method of allowing online, contingent social interactions in the scanner could open up new avenues of research in social cognitive neuroscience, both in typical and atypical populations.Simons FoundationNational Institutes of Health (Postdoctoral National Research Service Award

Contrast sensitivity for motion detection and direction discrimination in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders and their siblings

The magnocellular (M) pathway hypothesis proposes that impaired visual motion perception observed in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) might be mediated by atypical functioning of the subcortical M pathway, as this pathway provides the bulk of visual input to cortical motion detectors. To test this hypothesis, we measured luminance and chromatic contrast sensitivity, thought to tap M and Parvocellular (P) pathway processing, respectively. We also tested the hypothesis that motion processing is impaired in ASD using a novel paradigm that measures motion processing while controlling for detectabilty. Specifically, this paradigm compares contrast sensitivity for detection of a moving grating with contrast sensitivity for direction-of-motion discrimination of that same moving grating. Contrast sensitivities from adolescents with ASD were compared to typically-developing adolescents, and also unaffected siblings of individuals with ASD (SIBS). The results revealed significant group differences on P, but not M, pathway processing, with SIBS showing higher chromatic contrast sensitivity than both participants with ASD and TD participants. This atypicality, unique to SIBS, suggests the possible existence of a protective factor in these individuals against developing ASD. The results also revealed impairments in motion perception in both participants with ASD and SIBS, which may be an endophenotype of ASD. This impairment may be driven by impairments in motion detectors and/or by reduced input from neural areas that project to motion detectors, the latter possibility being consistent with the notion of reduced connectivity between neural areas in ASD

FMRI during natural sleep : a novel method to elucidate functional brain organization in typical development and autism

Exuberant social and linguistic development characterize the first years of life for the typical child, whereas deviant, stymied, or regressive development mark these years for the child with autism. The brain bases underlying the emergence of complex cognitive capacities in typical and atypical development remain speculative due to the current difficulty in acquiring functional brain imaging data from infants and toddlers without motion artifact. Through the use of a novel technique in which functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are collected during natural sleep, this dissertation provides the first fMRI studies of functional brain organization in 1-4 year old typically-developing children and 2-3 year- old children with autism. The feasibility of the sleep fMRI technique was investigated through two studies of typically-developing children. First, presentation of auditory and visual stimuli to typical 2-4 year-old children during sleep revealed differential activity between and within stimulus modalities. Furthermore, stimulus-independent auditory and visual networks were identified. Second, presentation of speech and nonspeech stimuli to two groups of typical children (toddlers and 3 year-olds) revealed age-related differences in the brain response to speech. Specifically, toddlers recruited an extended network pattern of brain activity encompassing frontal, occipital, and cerebellar regions. The 3 year- olds, however, showed a more focal pattern of BOLD activity primarily within bilateral superior temporal regions. This time-delimited, extended pattern of brain activity in the typical toddlers may allow for the rapid burst in language growth seen during the second year of life. These studies add to the growing body of literature indicating that stimulus discrimination and intrinsic functional networks persist during sleep. When speech and nonspeech stimuli were presented to 2-3 year old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a pattern of brain activity was identified that differed from two typically- developing control groups. In comparison to their mental age-matched controls (MA), the ASD group recruited a reduced number of brain regions within the 'extended network'. In comparison to their chronological age-matched controls (CA), the ASD group showed a greater reliance on right hemisphere brain regions. The discussion suggests possible implications of an early, right hemisphere, deviant developmental trajectory for the etiology of autis