Social cognition and the anterior temporal lobes: a review and theoretical framework

Overlapping neural correlates underpin theory of mind and semantic cognition: Evidence from a meta-analysis of 344 functional neuroimaging studies

Key unanswered questions for cognitive neuroscience include whether social cognition is underpinned by specialised brain regions and to what extent it simultaneously depends on more domain-general systems. Until we glean a better understanding of the full set of contributions made by various systems, theories of social cognition will remain fundamentally limited. In the present study, we evaluate a recent proposal that semantic cognition plays a crucial role in supporting social cognition. While previous brain-based investigations have focused on dissociating these two systems, our primary aim was to assess the degree to which the neural correlates are overlapping, particularly within two key regions, the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). We focus on activation associated with theory of mind (ToM) and adopt a meta-analytic activation likelihood approach to synthesise a large set of functional neuroimaging studies and compare their results with studies of semantic cognition. As a key consideration, we sought to account for methodological differences across the two sets of studies, including the fact that ToM studies tend to use nonverbal stimuli while the semantics literature is dominated by language-based tasks. Overall, we observed consistent overlap between the two sets of brain regions, especially in the ATL and TPJ. This supports the claim that tasks involving ToM draw upon more general semantic retrieval processes. We also identified activation specific to ToM in the right TPJ, bilateral anterior mPFC, and right precuneus. This is consistent with the view that, nested amongst more domain-general systems, there is specialised circuitry that is tuned to social processes.

The neuropsychological evaluation of face identity recognition

Facial identity recognition (FIR) is arguably the ultimate form of recognition for the adult human brain. Even if the term prosopagnosia is reserved for exceptionally rare brain-damaged cases with a category-specific abrupt loss of FIR at adulthood, subjective and objective impairments or difficulties of FIR are common in the neuropsychological population. Here we provide a critical overview of the evaluation of FIR both for clinicians and researchers in neuropsychology. FIR impairments occur following many causes that should be identified objectively by both general and specific, behavioral and neural examinations. We refute the commonly used dissociation between perceptual and memory deficits/tests for FIR, since even a task involving the discrimination of unfamiliar face images presented side-by-side relies on cortical memories of faces in the right-lateralized ventral occipito-temporal cortex. Another frequently encountered confusion is between specific deficits of the FIR function and a more general impairment of semantic memory (of people), the latter being most often encountered following anterior temporal lobe damage. Many computerized tests aimed at evaluating FIR have appeared over the last two decades, as reviewed here. However, despite undeniable strengths, they often suffer from ecological limitations, difficulties of instruction, as well as a lack of consideration for processing speed and qualitative information. Taking into account these issues, a recently developed behavioral test with natural images manipulating face familiarity, stimulus inversion, and correct response times as a key variable appears promising. The measurement of electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in the frequency domain from fast periodic visual stimulation also appears as a particularly promising tool to complete and enhance the neuropsychological assessment of FIR.

A neuroanatomical and cognitive model of impaired social behaviour in frontotemporal dementia

Impaired social cognition is a core deficit in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). It is most commonly associated with the behavioural-variant of FTD, with atrophy of the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Social cognitive changes are also common in semantic dementia, with atrophy centred on the anterior temporal lobes. The impairment of social behaviour in FTD has typically been attributed to damage to the orbitofrontal cortex and/or temporal poles and/or the uncinate fasciculus that connects them. However, the relative contributions of each region are unresolved. In this review, we present a unified neurocognitive model of controlled social behaviour that not only explains the observed impairment of social behaviours in FTD, but also assimilates both consistent and potentially contradictory findings from other patient groups, comparative neurology and normative cognitive neuroscience. We propose that impaired social behaviour results from damage to two cognitively- and anatomically-distinct components. The first component is social-semantic knowledge, a part of the general semantic-conceptual system supported by the anterior temporal lobes bilaterally. The second component is social control, supported by the orbitofrontal cortex, medial frontal cortex and ventrolateral frontal cortex, which interacts with social-semantic knowledge to guide and shape social behaviour.

Roles of the Default Mode Network in Different Aspects of Self-representation When Remembering Social Autobiographical Memories

Autobiographical memory (AM) is episodic memory for personally experienced events, in which self-representation is more important than that in laboratory-based memory. Theoretically, self-representation in a social context is categorized as the interpersonal self (IS) referred to in a social interaction with a person or the social-valued self (SS) based on the reputation of the self in the surrounding society. Although functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the involvement of the default mode network (DMN) in self-representation, little is known about how the DMN subsystems contribute differentially to IS-related and SS-related AMs. To elucidate this issue, we used fMRI to scan healthy young adults during the recollection of AMs. We performed multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) and assessed functional connectivity in the DMN subsystems: the midline core, medial temporal lobe (MTL), and dorsomedial pFC (dmPFC) subsystems. The study yielded two main sets of findings. First, MVPA revealed that all DMN subsystems showed significant classification accuracy between IS-related and nonsocial-self-related AMs, and IS-related functional connectivity of the midline core regions with the retrosplenial cortex of the MTL subsystem and the dmPFC of the dmPFC subsystem was significant. Second, MVPA significantly distinguished between SS-related and nonsocial-self-related AMs in the midline core and dmPFC subsystems but not in the MTL subsystem, and SS-related functional connectivity with the midline core regions was significant in the temporal pole and TPJ of the dmPFC subsystem. Thus, dissociable neural mechanisms in the DMN could contribute to different aspects of self-representation in social AMs.

Assigning a social status from face adornments: an fMRI study

For at least 150,000 years, the human body has been culturally modified by the wearing of personal ornaments and probably by painting with red pigment. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the brain networks involved in attributing social status from face decorations. Results showed the fusiform gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, and salience network were involved in social encoding, categorization, and evaluation. The hippocampus and parahippocampus were activated due to the memory and associative skills required for the task, while the inferior frontal gyrus likely interpreted face ornaments as symbols. Resting-state functional connectivity analysis clarified the interaction between these regions. The study highlights the importance of these neural interactions in the symbolic interpretation of social markers on the human face, which were likely active in early Homo species and intensified with Homo sapiens populations as more complex technologies were developed to culturalize the human face.

A shared neural code for perceiving and remembering social interactions in the human superior temporal sulcus

Recognizing and remembering social information is a crucial cognitive skill. Neural patterns in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) support our ability to perceive others' social interactions. However, despite the prominence of social interactions in memory, the neural basis of remembering social interactions is still unknown. To fill this gap, we investigated the brain mechanisms underlying memory of others' social interactions during free spoken recall of a naturalistic movie. By applying machine learning-based fMRI encoding analyses to densely labeled movie and recall data we found that a subset of the STS activity evoked by viewing social interactions predicted neural responses in not only held-out movie data, but also during memory recall. These results provide the first evidence that activity in the STS is reinstated in response to specific social content and that its reactivation underlies our ability to remember others' interactions. These findings further suggest that the STS contains representations of social interactions that are not only perceptually driven, but also more abstract or conceptual in nature.

Development and validation of the trauma-specific emotional counting Stroop paradigm for fMRI study

BACKGROUND

The emotional-counting Stroop (ecStroop) is a cognitive task to evaluate emotional information processing. This study aimed to develop a trauma-specific ecStroop protocol for firefighters and assess its validity as a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation paradigm.

METHODS

To develop the ecStroop protocol, trauma-related words for firefighters were selected from previous studies, and general negative and neutral words were matched corresponding to the number of letters and syllables, parts of speech, and frequency in the Korean language. The negative emotional valence of whole words was investigated in 520 healthy participants. To compare brain activation between three categories, 25 healthy individuals underwent fMRI during the ecStroop task.

RESULTS

Eight trauma-related words, eight general negative words, and sixteen neutral words were selected by emotional valence scores. The general negative words were related to increased activation in the right inferior and middle temporal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus, and left superior frontal gyrus compared to the neutral words. When exposed to the trauma-related words, participants' brain activation was increased in the right inferior temporal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus as compared to when exposed to the neutral words.

LIMITATIONS

The fact that all participants in the phase 2 fMRI study were male could limit generalization to all genders.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that the ecStroop paradigm successfully activated the brain regions for emotional processing. This paradigm could be valuable in assessing the trauma-specific neural changes in firefighters.

The neural basis of naturalistic semantic and social cognition

Decoding social environments and engaging meaningfully with other people are critical aspects of human cognition. Multiple cognitive systems, including social and semantic cognition, work alongside each other to support these processes. This study investigated shared processing between social and semantic systems using neuroimaging data collected during movie-viewing, which captures the multimodal environment in which social knowledge is exchanged. Semantic and social content from movie events (event-level) and movie transcripts (word-level) were used in parametric modulation analyses to test (1) the degree to which semantic and social information is processed within each respective network and (2) engagement of the same cross-network regions or the same domain-general hub located within the semantic network during semantic and social processing. Semantic word and event-level content engaged the same fronto-temporo-parietal network and a portion of the semantic hub in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). Social word and event-level content engaged the supplementary motor area and right angular gyrus within the social network, but only social words engaged the domain-general semantic hub in left ATL. There was evidence of shared processing between the social and semantic systems in the dorsolateral portion of right ATL which was engaged by word and event-level semantic and social content. Overlap between the semantic and social word and event results was highly variable within and across participants, with the most consistent loci of overlap occurring in left inferior frontal, bilateral precentral and supramarginal gyri for social and semantic words and in bilateral superior temporal gyrus extending from ATL posteriorly into supramarginal gyri for social and semantic events. These results indicate a complex pattern of shared and distinct regions for social and semantic cognition during naturalistic processing. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on October 11, 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ACWQY .

Interpersonal neural synchronization during social interactions in close relationships: A systematic review and meta-analysis of fNIRS hyperscanning studies

In recent years, researchers have used hyperscanning techniques to explore how brains interact during various human activities. These studies have revealed a phenomenon called interpersonal neural synchronization (INS), but little research has focused on the overall effect of INS in close relationships. To address this gap, this study aims to synthesize and analyze the existing literature on INS during social interactions in close relationships. We conducted a meta-analysis of 17 functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning studies involving 1149 dyads participants, including romantic couples and parent-child dyads. The results revealed robust and consistent INS in the frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of the brain and found similar INS patterns in couples and parent-child studies, providing solid empirical evidence for the attachment theory. Moreover, the age of children and brain areas were significant predictors of the effect size in parent-child research. The developmental stage of children and the mismatched development of brain structures might be the crucial factors for the difference in neural performance in social and cognitive behaviors in parent-child dyads.

Frontotemporal contributions to social and non-social semantic judgements

Semantic judgements involve the use of general knowledge about the world in specific situations. Such judgements are typically associated with activity in a number of brain regions that include the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). However, previous studies showed activity in brain regions associated with mentalizing, including the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ), in semantic judgements that involved social knowledge. The aim of the present study was to investigate if social and non-social semantic judgements are dissociated using a combination of fMRI and repetitive TMS. To study this, we asked participants to estimate the percentage of exemplars in a given category that shared a specified attribute. Categories could be either social (i.e., stereotypes) or non-social (i.e., object categories). As expected, fMRI results (n = 26) showed enhanced activity in the left IFG that was specific to non-social semantic judgements. However, statistical evidence did not support that repetitive TMS stimulation (n = 19) to this brain region specifically disrupted non-social semantic judgements. Also as expected, the right TPJ showed enhanced activity to social semantic judgements. However, statistical evidence did not support that repetitive TMS stimulation to this brain region specifically disrupted social semantic judgements. It is possible that the causal networks involved in social and non-social semantic judgements may be more complex than expected.

Sticky criticism? Affective and neural responses to parental criticism and praise in adolescents with depression

BACKGROUND

Parent-adolescent interactions, particularly parental criticism and praise, have previously been identified as factors relevant to self-concept development and, when negative, to adolescent depression. Yet, whether adolescents with depression show aberrant emotional and neural reactivity to parental criticism and praise is understudied.

METHODS

Adolescents with depression (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 59) received feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of negative ('untrustworthy'), neutral ('chaotic'), and positive ('respectful') personality evaluations while in an MRI-scanner. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Beforehand, adolescents had rated whether these personality evaluations matched their self-views.

RESULTS

In both groups, mood decreased after criticism and increased after praise. Adolescents with depression reported blunted mood responses after praise, whereas there were no mood differences after criticism. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls) exhibited increased activity in response to criticism in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Praise consistent with adolescents' self-views improved mood independent of depression status, while criticism matching self-views resulted in smaller mood increases in adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls). Exploratory analyses indicated that adolescents with depression recalled criticism (v. praise) more.

CONCLUSIONS

Adolescents with depression might be especially attentive to parental criticism, as indexed by increased sgACC and hippocampus activity, and memorize this criticism more. Together with lower positive impact of praise, these findings suggest that cognitive biases in adolescent depression may affect how parental feedback is processed, and may be fed into their self-views.

Theory of mind in mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson's disease: The role of memory impairment

BACKGROUND

Social cognition is impaired in Parkinson's disease (PD). Whether social cognitive impairment (iSC) is a by-product of the underlying cognitive deficits in PD or a process independent of cognitive status is unknown. To this end, the present study was designed to investigate the weight of specific cognitive deficits in social cognition, considering different mild cognitive impairment subtypes of PD (PD-MCI).

METHODS

Fifty-eight PD patients underwent a neuropsychological battery assessing executive functions, memory, language, and visuospatial domains, together with social cognitive tests focused on theory of mind (ToM). Patients were divided into subgroups according to their clinical cognitive status: amnestic PD-MCI (PD-aMCI, n = 18), non-amnestic PD-MCI (PD-naMCI, n = 16), and cognitively unimpaired (PD-CU, n = 24). Composite scores for cognitive and social domains were computed to perform mediation analyses.

RESULTS

Memory and language impairments mediated the effect of executive functioning in social cognitive deficits in PD patients. Dividing by MCI subgroups, iSC occurred more frequently in PD-aMCI (77.8%) than in PD-naMCI (18.8%) and PD-CU (8.3%). Moreover, PD-aMCI performed worse than PD-CU in all social cognitive measures, whereas PD-naMCI performed worse than PD-CU in only one subtype of the affective and cognitive ToM tests.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that ToM impairment in PD can be explained by memory dysfunction that mediates executive control. ToM downsides in the amnesic forms of PD-MCI may suggest that subtle changes in social cognition could partly explain future transitions into dementia. Hence, the evaluation of social cognition in PD is critical to characterize a possible behavioral marker of cognitive decline.

Macroscale neurovascular coupling and functional integration in end-stage renal disease patients with cognitive impairment: A multimodal MRI study

End-stage renal disease (ESRD) is associated with vascular and neuronal dysfunction, causing neurovascular coupling (NVC) dysfunction, but how NVC dysfunction acts on the mechanism of cognitive impairment in ESRD patients from local to remote is still poorly understood. We recruited 48 ESRD patients and 35 demographically matched healthy controls to scan resting-state functional MRI and arterial spin labeling, then investigated the four types of NVC between amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), fractional ALFF, regional homogeneity, degree centrality, and cerebral blood perfusion (CBF), and associated functional networks. Our results indicated that ESRD patients showed NVC dysfunction in global gray matter and multiple brain regions due to the mismatch between CBF and neural activity, and associated disrupted functional connectivity (FC) within sensorimotor network (SMN), visual network (VN), default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), and disrupted FC between them with limbic network (LN), while increased FC between SMN and DMN. Anemia may affect the NVC of middle occipital gyrus and precuneus, and increased pulse pressure may result in disrupted FC with SMN. The NVC dysfunction of the right precuneus, middle frontal gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus and the FC between the right angular gyrus and the right anterior cingulate gyrus may reflect cognitive impairment in ESRD patients. Our study confirmed that ESRD patients may exist NVC dysfunction and disrupted functional integration in SMN, VN, DMN, SN and LN, serving as one of the mechanisms of cognitive impairment. Anemia and increased pulse pressure may be related risk factors.

The neural correlates of value hierarchies: a prospective typology based on personal value profiles of emerging adults

Introduction

Value hierarchies, as motivational goals anchored in the self-schema, may be correlated with spontaneous activity in the resting brain, especially those involving self-relevance. This study aims to investigate the neural correlates of value hierarchies from the perspective of typology.

Methods

A total of 610 Chinese college students (30.31% women), aged 18 to 23, completed the personal values questionnaire and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Results

The latent profile analysis revealed three personal value profiles: traditional social orientation, modernized orientation, and undifferentiated orientation. Neuroimaging results revealed that individuals with modernized orientation prioritized openness to change value, and this personal-focus is related to the higher low-frequency amplitude of the posterior insula; individuals with traditional social orientation prioritized self-transcendence and conservation values, and this social-focus is related to the stronger functional connectivity of the middle insula with the inferior temporal gyrus, temporal gyrus, posterior occipital cortex, and basal ganglia, as well as weaker functional connections within the right middle insula.

Discussion

Taken together, these findings potentially indicate the intra-generational differentiation of contemporary Chinese emerging adults' value hierarchies. At the neural level, these are correlated with brain activities involved in processing self- and other-relevance.

Resilient functioning is associated with altered structural brain network topology in adolescents exposed to childhood adversity

Childhood adversity is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent mental illness. Therefore, it is critical that the mechanisms that aid resilient functioning in individuals exposed to childhood adversity are better understood. Here, we examined whether resilient functioning was related to structural brain network topology. We quantified resilient functioning at the individual level as psychosocial functioning adjusted for the severity of childhood adversity in a large sample of adolescents (N = 2406, aged 14-24). Next, we examined nodal degree (the number of connections that brain regions have in a network) using brain-wide cortical thickness measures in a representative subset (N = 275) using a sliding window approach. We found that higher resilient functioning was associated with lower nodal degree of multiple regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (z > 1.645). During adolescence, decreases in nodal degree are thought to reflect a normative developmental process that is part of the extensive remodeling of structural brain network topology. Prior findings in this sample showed that decreased nodal degree was associated with age, as such our findings of negative associations between nodal degree and resilient functioning may therefore potentially resemble a more mature structural network configuration in individuals with higher resilient functioning.

A fist bump in a political meeting? The influence of social context on affordance selection

Historically, understanding human cognition such as action processing has been a challenging issue in cognitive neuropsychology and the more we know about cognition, the more we shape it as a complex, multi-determined phenomenon that is embedded in a social context. The present study aimed at understanding how the social context could influence affordance selection. We hypothesized that affordance selection would be modulated by social context and that a given hand configuration would be considered appropriate or not, as a function of the presence or absence of social context. Twenty-six healthy participants were asked to judge the appropriateness of three variants of 10 hand-object interactions based on photographs presented with or without a visual, social context. In our results, hand configurations were intrinsically acceptable or not, but this effect was modulated by the social context. A three-step model of the influence of social context on affordance selection was proposed, according to which selection depends on social norms, in the form of social knowledge and social context analysis.

Structural connectivity of cytoarchitectonically distinct human left temporal pole subregions: a diffusion MRI tractography study

The temporal pole (TP) is considered one of the major paralimbic cortical regions, and is involved in a variety of functions such as sensory perception, emotion, semantic processing, and social cognition. Based on differences in cytoarchitecture, the TP can be further subdivided into smaller regions (dorsal, ventrolateral and ventromedial), each forming key nodes of distinct functional networks. However, the brain structural connectivity profile of TP subregions is not fully clarified. Using diffusion MRI data in a set of 31 healthy subjects, we aimed to elucidate the comprehensive structural connectivity of three cytoarchitectonically distinct TP subregions. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) analysis suggested that major association fiber pathways such as the inferior longitudinal, middle longitudinal, arcuate, and uncinate fasciculi provide structural connectivity to the TP. Further analysis suggested partially overlapping yet still distinct structural connectivity patterns across the TP subregions. Specifically, the dorsal subregion is strongly connected with wide areas in the parietal lobe, the ventrolateral subregion with areas including constituents of the default-semantic network, and the ventromedial subregion with limbic and paralimbic areas. Our results suggest the involvement of the TP in a set of extensive but distinct networks of cortical regions, consistent with its functional roles.

Neural tracking of social hierarchies in adolescents' real-world social networks

In the current study, we combined sociometric nominations and neuroimaging techniques to examine adolescents' neural tracking of peers from their real-world social network that varied in social preferences and popularity. Adolescent participants from an entire school district (N = 873) completed peer sociometric nominations of their grade at school, and a subset of participants (N = 117, Mage = 13.59 years) completed a neuroimaging task in which they viewed peer faces from their social networks. We revealed two neural processes by which adolescents track social preference: (1) the fusiform face area, an important region for early visual perception and social categorization, simultaneously represented both peers high in social preference and low in social preference; (2) the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which was differentially engaged in tracking peers high and low in social preference. No regions specifically tracked peers high in popularity and only the inferior parietal lobe, temporoparietal junction, midcingulate cortex and insula were involved in tracking unpopular peers. This is the first study to examine the neural circuits that support adolescents' perception of peer-based social networks. These findings identify the neural processes that allow youths to spontaneously keep track of peers' social value within their social network.

A social-semantic working-memory account for two canonical language areas

Language and social cognition are traditionally studied as separate cognitive domains, yet accumulative studies reveal overlapping neural correlates at the left ventral temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and the left lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL), which have been attributed to sentence processing and social concept activation. We propose a common cognitive component underlying both effects: social-semantic working memory. We confirmed two key predictions of our hypothesis using functional MRI. First, the left vTPJ and lATL showed sensitivity to sentences only when the sentences conveyed social meaning; second, these regions showed persistent social-semantic-selective activity after the linguistic stimuli disappeared. We additionally found that both regions were sensitive to the socialness of non-linguistic stimuli and were more tightly connected with the social-semantic-processing areas than with the sentence-processing areas. The converging evidence indicates the social-semantic working-memory function of the left vTPJ and lATL and challenges the general-semantic and/or syntactic accounts for the neural activity of these regions.

Impaired social concept processing in persons with autistic-like traits

Situated models suggest that social concepts are grounded in interpersonal experience. However, few studies have tested this notion experimentally, and none has targeted individuals with reduced social interaction. Here, we assessed comprehension of text-level social and non-social concepts in persons with and without autistic-like traits. Participants read a social and a non-social text and answered questionnaires targeting social and non-social concepts, respectively. We compared behavioral outcomes, gauged their contribution to subject-level classification, and examined their association with validated measures of autism. Persons with autistic-like traits showed selective deficits in grasping text-level social concepts, even adjusting for intelligence, memory, and vocabulary. Also, social concept comprehension was the only variable that significantly classified between groups. Finally, social concept outcomes correlated negatively with measures of autism, including social interaction. Our results suggest that reduced interpersonal experience selectively compromises text-level social concept processing, offering empirical constraints for situated models of social semantics.

Single neuron responses underlying face recognition in the human midfusiform face-selective cortex

Faces are critical for social interactions and their recognition constitutes one of the most important and challenging functions of the human brain. While neurons responding selectively to faces have been recorded for decades in the monkey brain, face-selective neural activations have been reported with neuroimaging primarily in the human midfusiform gyrus. Yet, the cellular mechanisms producing selective responses to faces in this hominoid neuroanatomical structure remain unknown. Here we report single neuron recordings performed in 5 human subjects (1 male, 4 females) implanted with intracerebral microelectrodes in the face-selective midfusiform gyrus, while they viewed pictures of familiar and unknown faces and places. We observed similar responses to faces and places at the single cell level, but a significantly higher number of neurons responding to faces, thus offering a mechanistic account for the face-selective activations observed in this region. Although individual neurons did not respond preferentially to familiar faces, a population level analysis could consistently determine whether or not the faces (but not the places) were familiar, only about 50 ms after the initial recognition of the stimuli as faces. These results provide insights into the neural mechanisms of face processing in the human brain.

3D synaptic organization of layer III of the human anterior cingulate and temporopolar cortex

The human anterior cingulate and temporopolar cortices have been proposed as highly connected nodes involved in high-order cognitive functions, but their synaptic organization is still basically unknown due to the difficulties involved in studying the human brain. Using Focused Ion Beam/Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB/SEM) to study the synaptic organization of the human brain obtained with a short post-mortem delay allows excellent results to be obtained. We have used this technology to analyze layer III of the anterior cingulate cortex (Brodmann area 24) and the temporopolar cortex, including the temporal pole (Brodmann area 38 ventral and dorsal) and anterior middle temporal gyrus (Brodmann area 21). Our results, based on 6695 synaptic junctions fully reconstructed in 3D, revealed that Brodmann areas 24, 21 and ventral area 38 showed similar synaptic density and synaptic size, whereas dorsal area 38 displayed the highest synaptic density and the smallest synaptic size. However, the proportion of the different types of synapses (excitatory and inhibitory), the postsynaptic targets, and the shapes of excitatory and inhibitory synapses were similar, regardless of the region examined. These observations indicate that certain aspects of the synaptic organization are rather homogeneous, whereas others show specific variations across cortical regions.

Prospective associations between maternal mind-mindedness, child theory of mind, and brain morphology in school-aged children

Mentalizing is defined as the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. In the context of parental behavior, parents' tendency to comment on their child's mental activities refers to the concept of mind-mindedness (MM). MM has been positively associated with various developmental outcomes in children, notably their own ability to mentalize, known as theory of mind (ToM). Although parental (MM) and child (ToM) mentalizing have important implications during childhood, their associations with children's neural structures are largely unknown. Among 62 mother-child dyads, maternal MM was rated from free-play sequences when children were aged 1 year, child ToM was assessed using a first-order false-belief task at 4 years of age, and structural MRI images were acquired at 10 years of age. Maternal MM was positively associated with gray matter volumes (GMV) in the dorsal prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal pole. Child ToM abilities were positively associated with GMV in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Though cortical regions associated with MM and ToM showed no anatomical overlap, many are functionally connected through a neural network highly involved in self-referential strategies for mentalizing. These findings suggest that MM and ToM may contribute to distinct sub-processes that collectively support social cognition development.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of abstract and concrete semantic representations

Dual Coding Theories (DCT) suggest that meaning is represented in the brain by a double code: a language-derived code in the Anterior Temporal Lobe (ATL) and a sensory-derived code in perceptual and motor regions. Concrete concepts should activate both codes, while abstract ones rely solely on the linguistic code. To test these hypotheses, the present magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiment had participants judge whether visually presented words relate to the senses while we recorded brain responses to abstract and concrete semantic components obtained from 65 independently rated semantic features. Results evidenced early involvement of anterior-temporal and inferior-frontal brain areas in both abstract and concrete semantic information encoding. At later stages, occipital and occipito-temporal regions showed greater responses to concrete compared to abstract features. The present findings suggest that the concreteness of words is processed first with a transmodal/linguistic code, housed in frontotemporal brain systems, and only after with an imagistic/sensorimotor code in perceptual regions.

Functional geometry of auditory cortical resting state networks derived from intracranial electrophysiology

Understanding central auditory processing critically depends on defining underlying auditory cortical networks and their relationship to the rest of the brain. We addressed these questions using resting state functional connectivity derived from human intracranial electroencephalography. Mapping recording sites into a low-dimensional space where proximity represents functional similarity revealed a hierarchical organization. At a fine scale, a group of auditory cortical regions excluded several higher-order auditory areas and segregated maximally from the prefrontal cortex. On mesoscale, the proximity of limbic structures to the auditory cortex suggested a limbic stream that parallels the classically described ventral and dorsal auditory processing streams. Identities of global hubs in anterior temporal and cingulate cortex depended on frequency band, consistent with diverse roles in semantic and cognitive processing. On a macroscale, observed hemispheric asymmetries were not specific for speech and language networks. This approach can be applied to multivariate brain data with respect to development, behavior, and disorders.

Maintaining her image: A social comparative evaluation of the particularity of mothers in the Chinese cultural context

In Chinese culture, the mother holds a special meaning in one's self-concept, and is perceived as being stablyincorporated into and consistent with the self. However, it is unclear whether the evaluation of mothers by individuals is affected following the initiation of upward and downward social comparisons (USC and DSC). This experiment manipulated USC and DSC by evaluating positive and negative public figures and used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to record changes in brain activity during the evaluation. It was found that participants' evaluations of their mothers and their brain activity did not differ from the self during USC, verifying the equivalence of the mother and the self. In DSC, participants made significantly more positive social judgments about their mothers, accompanied by greater activation of the left temporal lobe. These results suggest that the mother was not only stably incorporated into the self but was in a position of even greater importance than the self. In DSC in particular, individuals are more likely to maintain a positive image of their mother.

Semantic knowledge of social interactions is mediated by the hedonic evaluation system in the brain

Attaching semantic meaning to sensory information received from both inside and outside our bodies is a fundamental function of the human brain. The theory of Controlled Semantic Cognition (CSC) proposes that the formation of semantic knowledge relies on connections between spatially distributed modality-specific spoke-nodes, and a modality-general hub in the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs). This theory can also be applied to social semantic knowledge, though certain domain-specific spoke-nodes may make a disproportionate contribution to the understanding of social concepts. The ATLs have strong connections with spoke-node structures such as the subgenual ACC (sgACC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that play an important role in predicting the hedonic value of stimuli. We hypothesized that in addition to the ATL semantic hub, a social semantic task would also require input from hedonic evaluation structures. We used voxel based morphometry (VBM) to examine structural brain-behavior relationships in 152 patients with neurodegeneration (Alzheimer's disease [N = 12], corticobasal syndrome (N = 18], progressive supranuclear palsy [N = 13], behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia [N = 56], and primary progressive aphasia (PPA) [N = 53]) using the Social Interaction Vocabulary Task (SIVT). This task measures the ability to correctly match a social term (e.g. "gossiping") with a visual depiction of that social interaction. As predicted, VBM showed that worse SIVT scores corresponded with volume loss in bilateral ATL semantic hub regions, but also in the sgACC, OFC, caudate and putamen (pFWE <0.05). These results support the CSC model of a hub-and-spoke organization of social semantic knowledge with the ATL as a domain-general semantic hub, and ventromedial and striatal structures as domain specific spoke-nodes. Importantly, these results suggest that correct comprehension of social semantic concepts requires emotional 'tagging' of a concept by the evaluation system, and that the social deficits observed in some neurodegenerative disease syndromes may be caused by the break-down of this mechanism.

Neural Processing of Odors with Different Well-Being Associations—Findings from Two Consecutive Neuroimaging Studies

Much is known about the effect of odors on mood, cognition and behavior, but little is known about the relationship between odors and well-being. We investigated the neural processing of odors with different degrees of association with well-being (WB) through two large independent datasets. The study encompassed pre-testing and fMRI. During pre-testing, 100 and 80 (studies 1 and 2) young, healthy subjects participated, rating intensity, valence, and WB association for 14 (study 1) and 8 (study 2) different odors. Pre-testing resulted in the selection of two odors with high WB association (WB-associated) and two odors with lower WB association (neutral odors) for each study. Odors were delivered intranasally to the subjects who underwent fMRI scanning (44 and 41 subjects, respectively, for studies 1 and 2). We assessed brain activity for subjects when they experienced WB-associated versus neutral odors. In study 1, WB-associated odors showed increased activation in the right angular gyrus whereas in study 2, increased activity in the left angular gyrus existed, together with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and posterior orbitofrontal cortex. The increased activity of higher-order cognitive and emotional regions during the processing of WB-associated odors in the two independent studies suggests a role of odors in influencing individual well-being. Moreover, the consistent activation of the angular gyrus might suggest its key role in shifting attention toward relevant emotional stimuli.

A Semantic Cognition Contribution to Mood and Anxiety Disorder Pathophysiology

Over the last two decades, the functional role of the bilateral anterior temporal lobes (bATLs) has been receiving more attention. They have been associated with semantics and social concept processing, and are regarded as a core region for depression. In the past, the role of the ATL has often been overlooked in semantic models based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) due to geometric distortions in the BOLD signal. However, previous work has unequivocally associated the bATLs with these higher-order cognitive functions following advances in neuroimaging techniques to overcome the geometric distortions. At the same time, the importance of the neural basis of conceptual knowledge in understanding mood disorders became apparent. Theoretical models of the neural basis of mood and anxiety disorders have been classically studied from the emotion perspective, without concentrating on conceptual processing. However, recent work suggests that the ATL, a brain region underlying conceptual knowledge, plays an essential role in mood and anxiety disorders. Patients with anxiety and depression often cope with self-blaming biases and guilt. The theory is that in order to experience guilt, the brain needs to access the related conceptual information via the ATL. This narrative review describes how aberrant interactions of the ATL with the fronto–limbic emotional system could underlie mood and anxiety disorders.

Word-producing brain: Contribution of the left anterior middle temporal gyrus to word production patterns in spoken language

Vocabulary is based on semantic knowledge. The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has been considered an essential region for processing semantic knowledge; nonetheless, the association between word production patterns and the structural and functional characteristics of the ATL remains unclear. To examine this, we analyzed over one million words from group conversations among community-dwelling older adults and their multimodal magnetic resonance imaging data. A quantitative index for the word production patterns, namely the exponent β of Heaps' law, positively correlated with the left anterior middle temporal gyrus volume. Moreover, β negatively correlated with its resting-state functional connectivity with the precuneus. There was no significant correlation with the diffusion tensor imaging metrics in any fiber. These findings suggest that the vocabulary richness in spoken language depends on the brain status characterized by the semantic knowledge-related brain structure and its activation dissimilarity with the precuneus, a core region of the default mode network.

Social semantics: the organization and grounding of abstract concepts

concepts, like justice and friendship, are central features of our daily lives. Traditionally, abstract concepts are distinguished from other concepts in that they cannot be directly experienced through the senses. As such, they pose a challenge for strongly embodied models of semantic representation that assume a central role for sensorimotor information. There is growing recognition, however, that it is possible for meaning to be 'grounded' via cognitive systems, including those involved in processing language and emotion. In this article, we focus on the specific proposal that social significance is a key feature in the representation of some concepts. We begin by reviewing recent evidence in favour of this proposal from the fields of psycholinguistics and neuroimaging. We then discuss the limited extent to which there is consensus about the definition of 'socialness' and propose essential next steps for research in this domain. Taking one such step, we describe preliminary data from an unprecedented large-scale rating study that can help determine how socialness is distinct from other facets of word meaning. We provide a backdrop of contemporary theories regarding semantic representation and social cognition and highlight important predictions for both brain and behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Bipartite functional fractionation within the neural system for social cognition supports the psychological continuity of self versus other

Research of social neuroscience establishes that regions in the brain's default-mode network (DN) and semantic network (SN) are engaged by socio-cognitive tasks. Research of the human connectome shows that DN and SN regions are both situated at the transmodal end of a cortical gradient but differ in their loci along this gradient. Here we integrated these 2 bodies of research, used the psychological continuity of self versus other as a "test-case," and used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether these 2 networks would encode social concepts differently. We found a robust dissociation between the DN and SN-while both networks contained sufficient information for decoding broad-stroke distinction of social categories, the DN carried more generalizable information for cross-classifying across social distance and emotive valence than did the SN. We also found that the overarching distinction of self versus other was a principal divider of the representational space while social distance was an auxiliary factor (subdivision, nested within the principal dimension), and this representational landscape was more manifested in the DN than in the SN. Taken together, our findings demonstrate how insights from connectome research can benefit social neuroscience and have implications for clarifying the 2 networks' differential contributions to social cognition.

Quantifying social semantics: An inclusive definition of socialness and ratings for 8388 English words

It has been proposed that social experience plays an important role in the grounding of concepts, and socialness has been proffered as a fundamental organisational principle underpinning semantic representation in the human brain. However, the empirical support for these hypotheses is limited by inconsistencies in the way socialness has been defined and measured. To further advance theory, the field must establish a clearer working definition, and research efforts could be facilitated by the availability of an extensive set of socialness ratings for individual concepts. Therefore, in the current work, we employed a novel and inclusive definition to test the extent to which socialness is reliably perceived as a broad construct, and we report socialness norms for over 8000 English words, including nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Our inclusive socialness measure shows good reliability and validity, and our analyses suggest that the socialness ratings capture aspects of word meaning which are distinct to those measured by other pertinent semantic constructs, including concreteness and emotional valence. Finally, in a series of regression analyses, we show for the first time that the socialness of a word's meaning explains unique variance in participant performance on lexical tasks. Our dataset of socialness norms has considerable item overlap with those used in both other lexical/semantic norms and in available behavioural mega-studies. They can help target testable predictions about brain and behaviour derived from multiple representation theories and neurobiological accounts of social semantics.

A neurocognitive approach to studying processes underlying parents' gender socialization

Parental gender socialization refers to ways in which parents teach their children social expectations associated with gender. Relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying gender socialization. An overview of cognitive and neural processes underlying parental gender socialization is provided. Regarding cognitive processes, evidence exists that parents' implicit and explicit gender stereotypes, attitudes, and gendered attributions are implicated in gender socialization. Other cognitive factors, such as intergroup attitudes, gender essentialism, internal motivation for parenting without gender stereotypes, gender identity, and conflict resolution are theoretically relevant mechanisms underlying gender socialization, but need further investigation. Regarding neural processes, studies demonstrated that attentional processing, conflict monitoring, behavior regulation, and reward processing might underlie stereotypes and biased behavior. However, more research is necessary to test whether these neural processes are also related to parental gender socialization. Based on this overview, a framework is presented of neural and cognitive factors that were theoretically or empirically related to gender socialization.

Proper and common names in the semantic system

Proper names are an important part of language and communication. They are thought to have a special status due to their neuropsychological and psycholinguistic profile. To what extent proper names rely on the same semantic system as common names is not clear. In an fMRI study, we presented the same group of participants with both proper and common names to compare the associated activations. Both person and place names, as well as personally familiar and famous names were used, and compared with words representing concrete and abstract concepts. A whole-brain analysis was followed by a detailed analysis of subdivisions of four regions of interest known to play a central role in the semantic system: angular gyrus, anterior temporal lobe, posterior cingulate complex, and medial temporal lobe. We found that most subdivisions within these regions bilaterally were activated by both proper names and common names. The bilateral perirhinal and right entorhinal cortex showed a response specific to proper names, suggesting an item-specific role in retrieving person and place related information. While activation to person and place names overlapped greatly, place names were differentiated by activating areas associated with spatial memory and navigation. Person names showed greater right hemisphere involvement compared to places, suggesting a wider range of associations. Personally familiar names showed stronger activation bilaterally compared to famous names, indicating representations that are enhanced by autobiographic and episodic details. Both proper and common names are processed in the wider semantic system that contains associative, episodic, and spatial components. Processing of proper names is characterized by a somewhat stronger involvement these components, rather than by a fundamentally different system.

Amplitude of low frequency fluctuations during resting state fMRI in autistic children

Resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) provides an excellent platform for examining the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF), which are key indices of brain functioning. However, ALFF and fALFF have been used only sporadically to study autism. rs-fMRI data from 69 children (40 autistic, mean age = 8.47 ± 2.20 years; age range: 5.2 to 13.2; and 29 non-autistic, mean age = 9.02 ± 1.97 years; age range 5.9 to 12.9) were obtained from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE II). ALFF and fALFF were measured using CONN connectivity toolbox and SPM12, at whole-brain & network-levels. A two-sampled t-test and a 2 Group (autistic, non-autistic) × 7 Networks ANOVA were conducted to test group differences in ALFF and fALFF. The whole-brain analysis identified significantly reduced ALFF values for autistic participants in left parietal opercular cortex, precuneus, and right insula. At the network level, there was a significant effect of diagnostic group and brain network on ALFF values, and only significant effect of network, not group, on fALFF values. Regression analyses indicated a significant effect of age on ALFF values of certain networks in autistic participants. Such intrinsically different network-level responses in autistic participants may have implications for task-level recruitment and synchronization of brain areas, which may in turn impact optimal cognitive functioning. Moreover, differences in low frequency fluctuations of key networks, such as the DMN and SN, may underlie alterations in brain responses in autism that are frequently reported in the literature.

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe changes interpersonal neural synchronization and shared mental processes

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have shown that interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) is a ubiquitous phenomenon between individuals, and recent studies have further demonstrated close associations between INS and shared external sensorimotor input and/or internal mental processes within a dyad. However, most previous studies have employed an observational approach to describe the behavior-INS correlation, leading to difficulties in causally disentangling the relationship among INS, external sensorimotor input and the internal mental process.

OBJECTIVE/HYPOTHESIS

The present study aimed to directly change the level of INS through anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to test whether the change in INS would directly impact the internal mental process (Hypothesis 1) or indirectly through external sensorimotor input; the interaction behaviors were also changed (Hypothesis 2) or not (Hypothesis 3).

METHODS

Thirty pairs of romantically involved heterosexual couples were recruited for a within-subjects design. Three conditions were assessed: a true stimulation condition with 20-min anodal high-definition tDCS to the right anterior temporal lobe (rATL) of women before they communicated with their partners, a sham stimulation condition and a control brain region stimulation condition. The comparison between the true and sham or control brain region conditions allows us to detect the true effect of brain stimulation on INS. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning was used to simultaneously collect dyadic participants' hemodynamic signals during communication. INS, empathy, and interaction behaviors were examined and compared among different stimulation conditions.

RESULTS

True brain stimulation significantly decreased INS between the rATL of the women and sensorimotor cortex (SMC) of the men compared to the sham stimulation condition (t(27.8) = -2.821, P = 0.009, d = 0.714) and control brain region stimulation condition (t(27.2) = -2.606, P = 0.015, d = 0.664) during communication. It also significantly decreased the level of emotional empathy (F(2,145) = 6.893, P = 0.001) but did not change sensorimotor processes, such as verbal or nonverbal interaction behaviors. However, nonverbal behaviors mediated the relationship between the changes in INS and emotional empathy (lower limit confidence interval = 0.01, upper limit confidence interval = 2.66).

CONCLUSION(S)

These findings support the third hypothesis, suggesting that INS is associated with the shared internal mental process indirectly via the sensorimotor process, but the sensorimotor process itself does not covary with the INS and the associated internal mental process. These results provide new insight into the hierarchical architecture of dual-brain function from a bottom-up perspective.

Neural Basis of Prejudice and Prejudice Reduction

Social prejudices, based on race, ethnicity, gender, or other identities, pervade how we perceive, think about, and act toward others. Research on the neural basis of prejudice seeks to illuminate its effects by investigating the neurocognitive processes through which prejudice is formed, represented in the mind, expressed in behavior, and potentially reduced. In this article, we review current knowledge about the social neuroscience of prejudice regarding its influence on rapid social perception, representation in memory, emotional expression and relation to empathy, and regulation, and we discuss implications of this work for prejudice reduction interventions.

The fornix supports episodic memory during childhood

Episodic memory relies on the coordination of widespread brain regions that reconstruct spatiotemporal details of an episode. These topologically dispersed brain regions can rapidly communicate through structural pathways. Research in animal and human lesion studies implicate the fornix-the major output pathway of the hippocampus-in supporting various aspects of episodic memory. Because episodic memory undergoes marked changes in early childhood, we tested the link between the fornix and episodic memory in an age window of robust memory development (ages 4-8 years). Children were tested on the stories subtest from the Children's Memory Scale, a temporal order memory task, and a source memory task. Fornix streamlines were reconstructed using probabilistic tractography to estimate fornix microstructure. In addition, we measured fornix macrostructure and computed free water. To assess selectivity of our findings, we also reconstructed the uncinate fasciculus. Findings show that children's memory increases from ages 4 to 8 and that fornix micro- and macrostructure increases between ages 4 and 8. Children's memory performance across nearly every memory task correlated with individual differences in fornix, but not uncinate fasciculus, white matter. These findings suggest that the fornix plays an important role in supporting the development of episodic memory, and potentially semantic memory, in early childhood.

The cross-domain functional organization of posterior lateral temporal cortex: insights from ALE meta-analyses of 7 cognitive domains spanning 12,000 participants

The posterior lateral temporal cortex is implicated in many verbal, nonverbal, and social cognitive domains and processes. Yet without directly comparing these disparate domains, the region's organization remains unclear; do distinct processes engage discrete subregions, or could different domains engage shared neural correlates and processes? Here, using activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses, the bilateral posterior lateral temporal cortex subregions engaged in 7 domains were directly compared. These domains comprised semantics, semantic control, phonology, biological motion, face processing, theory of mind, and representation of tools. Although phonology and biological motion were predominantly associated with distinct regions, other domains implicated overlapping areas, perhaps due to shared underlying processes. Theory of mind recruited regions implicated in semantic representation, tools engaged semantic control areas, and faces engaged subregions for biological motion and theory of mind. This cross-domain approach provides insight into how posterior lateral temporal cortex is organized and why.

Altered brain regional homogeneity is associated with depressive symptoms in COVID-19

BACKGROUND

COVID-19 is an infectious disease that has spread worldwide in 2020, causing a severe pandemic. In addition to respiratory symptoms, neuropsychiatric manifestations are commonly observed, including chronic fatigue, depression, and anxiety. The neural correlates of neuropsychiatric symptoms in COVID-19 are still largely unknown.

METHODS

A total of 79 patients with COVID-19 (COV) and 17 healthy controls (HC) underwent 3 T functional magnetic resonance imaging at rest, as well as structural imaging. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) was calculated. We also measured depressive symptoms with the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), anxiety using the General Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale, and fatigue with the Multidimension Fatigue Inventory.

RESULTS

In comparison with HC, COV showed significantly higher depressive scores. Moreover, COV presented reduced ReHo in the left angular gyrus, the right superior/middle temporal gyrus and the left inferior temporal gyrus, and higher ReHo in the right hippocampus. No differences in gray matter were detected in these areas. Furthermore, we observed a negative correlation between ReHo in the left angular gyrus and PHQ-9 scores and a trend toward a positive correlation between ReHo in the right hippocampus and PHQ-9 scores.

LIMITATIONS

Heterogeneity in the clinical presentation in COV, the different timing from the first positive molecular swab test to the MRI, and the cross-sectional design of the study limit the generalizability of our findings.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that COVID-19 infection may contribute to depressive symptoms via a modulation of local functional connectivity in cortico-limbic circuits.

Right Temporal Lobe Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia: Systematic Review

Frontotemporal dementia corresponds to a heterogenous group of syndromes characterized by progressive changes in behavior and/or language. Approximately 30% of patients with primary progressive aphasia, semantic variant (semantic dementia), present with atrophy in the right cerebral hemisphere, in a rare clinical condition called right temporal variant of frontotemporal dementia (rtvFTD). The objective of the study is to present the main demographic, clinical, neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and pathologic characteristics of rtvFTD patients. A systematic review of the literature was carried out in the PubMed, LILACS, and SCIELO databases between January and March 2022. After the evaluation process, 41 articles were selected, published between 1993 and 2021. We found that rtvFTD presents with severe and progressive prosopagnosia (related to anterior temporal lobe injury) associated with behavioral symptoms-desinibition (51%), apathy (39%), obsessive-compulsive symptoms (37%), changes in eating habits (33%), and depression (28%), which is different from semantic dementia. The most common pathologic pattern is TDP-43, type C. This field of knowledge has few studies (mainly reports and case series) and heterogenous nomenclature, which is a limitation. A multinational longitudinal registry of people with rtvFTD, with standardized assessment and description of symptoms, is necessary to elucidate the characteristics of this entity.

Stronger brain activation for own baby but similar activation toward babies of own and different ethnicities in parents living in a multicultural environment

Specific facial features in infants automatically elicit attention, affection, and nurturing behaviour of adults, known as the baby schema effect. There is also an innate tendency to categorize people into in-group and out-group members based on salient features such as ethnicity. Societies are becoming increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, and there are limited investigations into the underlying neural mechanism of the baby schema effect in a multi-ethnic context. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine parents' (N = 27) neural responses to (a) non-own ethnic in-group and out-group infants, (b) non-own in-group and own infants, and (c) non-own out-group and own infants. Parents showed similar brain activations, regardless of ethnicity and kinship, in regions associated with attention, reward processing, empathy, memory, goal-directed action planning, and social cognition. The same regions were activated to a higher degree when viewing the parents' own infant. These findings contribute further understanding to the dynamics of baby schema effect in an increasingly interconnected social world.

A Short Functional Neuroimaging Assay Using Attachment Scenes to Recruit Neural Correlates of Social Cognition—A Replication Study

Attachment theory provides a conceptual framework to understand the impact of early child–caregiver experiences, such as loss or separation, on adult functioning and psychopathology. In the current study, scenes from the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP), a validated, commonly used standardized diagnostic instrument to assess adult attachment representations, were used to develop a short fMRI assay eliciting the neural correlates of encoding of potentially hurtful and threatening social situations such as social losses, rejections or loneliness. Data from healthy participants (N = 19) showed activations in brain areas associated with social cognition and semantic knowledge during exposure to attachment-related scenes compared to control scenes. Extensive activation of the temporal poles was observed, suggesting the use of semantic knowledge for generating social concepts and scripts. This knowledge may underlie our ability to explain and predict social interactions, a specific aspect of theory of mind or mentalization. In this replication study, we verified the effectiveness of a modified fMRI assay to assess the external validity of a previously used imaging paradigm to investigate the processing of emotionally negatively valenced and painful social interactions. Our data confirm the recruitment of brain areas associated with social cognition with our very short neuroimaging assay.

The role of the ventrolateral anterior temporal lobes in social cognition

A key challenge for neurobiological models of social cognition is to elucidate whether brain regions are specialised for that domain. In recent years, discussion surrounding the role of anterior temporal regions epitomises such debates; some argue the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is part of a domain‐specific network for social processing, while others claim it comprises a domain‐general hub for semantic representation. In the present study, we used ATL‐optimised fMRI to map the contribution of different ATL structures to a variety of paradigms frequently used to probe a crucial social ability, namely ‘theory of mind’ (ToM). Using multiple tasks enables a clearer attribution of activation to ToM as opposed to idiosyncratic features of stimuli. Further, we directly explored whether these same structures are also activated by a non‐social task probing semantic representations. We revealed that common to all of the tasks was activation of a key ventrolateral ATL region that is often invisible to standard fMRI. This constitutes novel evidence in support of the view that the ventrolateral ATL contributes to social cognition via a domain‐general role in semantic processing and against claims of a specialised social function.

Impaired processing of conspecifics in Parkinson's disease

Experimental evidence indicates that the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) processes emotional/affective features crucial to elaborate knowledge about social groups and that knowledge of social concepts is stored in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL).We investigated whether knowledge about social groups is impaired in Parkinson's disease (PD), in which dysfunctional connectivity between IFG and ATL has been demonstrated.PD patients (N = 20) and healthy controls (HC, N = 16) were given a lexical decision task in a semantic priming paradigm: the prime-targets included 144 words and 144 pseudowords, each preceded by three types of prime ("animals," "things," "persons"). Out of these 288 prime-targets, forty-eight were congruent (same category) and 96 incongruent (different category). Out of 48 congruent prime-targets, 24 denoted social items and 24 nonsocial items. Thus, four types of trials were obtained: congruent social; congruent nonsocial; incongruent social; incongruent nonsocial.Congruent target-words were recognized better than incongruent target-words by all groups. The semantic priming effect was preserved in PD; however, accuracy was significantly lower in PD than in HC in social items. No difference emerged between the two groups in nonsocial items.Impaired processing of words denoting social groups in PD may be due to impairment in accessing the affective/emotional features that characterize conceptual knowledge of social groups, for the functional disconnection between the IFG and the ATL.

A generalised semantic cognition account of aesthetic experience

Given that aesthetic experiences typically involve extracting meaning from environment, we believe that semantic cognition research has much to offer the field of neuroaesthetics. In the current paper, we propose a generalised framework that is inspired by the semantic cognition literature and that treats aesthetic experience as just one example of how meaning accumulates. According to our framework, aesthetic experiences are underpinned by the same cognitive and brain systems that are involved in deriving meaning from the environment in general, such as modality-specific conceptual representations and controlled processes for retrieving the appropriate type of information. Our generalised semantic cognition view of aesthetic experience has substantial implications for theory development: it leads to novel, falsifiable predictions and it reconfigures foundational assumptions regarding the structure of the cognitive and brain systems that may be involved in aesthetic experiences.

Neural representations of others' traits predict social decisions

SignificancePeople's decisions about how to treat others are known to be influenced by societally shared expectations about the typical traits of people from particular social groups (stereotypes). We combined a social psychological framework, an economic game, and multivariate functional MRI analysis to investigate whether and how trait inferences are instantiated neurally in the service of behavior toward members of different social groups. Multidimensional representations of trait content were found in brain regions associated with social cognition and in a region associated with inference-based decision-making: the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Only OFC representations predicted individual participants' behavior, suggesting that although stereotypes are also represented in social cognition regions, they exert influence on behavior via decision-making mechanisms centered in the OFC.

Neural similarity between mentalizing and live social interaction during the transition to adolescence

Social interactions are essential for human development, yet little neuroimaging research has examined their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms using socially interactive paradigms during childhood and adolescence. Recent neuroimaging research has revealed activity in the mentalizing network when children engage with a live social partner, even when mentalizing is not required. While this finding suggests that social‐interactive contexts may spontaneously engage mentalizing, it is not a direct test of how similarly the brain responds to these two contexts. The current study used representational similarity analysis on data from 8‐ to 14‐year‐olds who made mental and nonmental judgments about an abstract character and a live interaction partner during fMRI. A within‐subject, 2 (Mental/Nonmental) × 2 (Peer/Character) design enabled us to examine response pattern similarity between conditions, and estimate fit to three conceptual models of how the two contexts relate: (1) social interaction and mentalizing about an abstract character are represented similarly; (2) interactive peers and abstract characters are represented differently regardless of the evaluation type; and (3) mental and nonmental states are represented dissimilarly regardless of target. We found that the temporal poles represent mentalizing and peer interactions similarly (Model 1), suggesting a neurocognitive link between the two in these regions. Much of the rest of the social brain exhibits different representations of interactive peers and abstract characters (Model 2). Our findings highlight the importance of studying social‐cognitive processes using interactive approaches, and the utility of pattern‐based analyses for understanding how social‐cognitive processes relate to each other.

Did It Change Your Mind? Neural Substrates of Purchase Intention Change and Product Information

Price and customer ratings are perhaps the two most important pieces of information consumers rely on when shopping online. This study aimed to elucidate the neural mechanism by which the introduction of these two types of information influences the purchase intention of potential consumers for hedonic products. Participants performed a lip-care product shopping task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, in which they re-disclosed purchase intentions referring to the information of price or rating provided about the products that they had previously disclosed their purchase intentions without any information. Data from 38 young female participants were analyzed to identify the underlying neural regions associated with the intention change and product information. The bilateral frontopolar cortex, bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), and left insula activated higher for the unchanged than changed intention condition. The right dACC and bilateral insula also activated more toward the price than the rating condition, whereas the medial prefrontal cortex and bilateral temporoparietal junction responded in the opposite direction. These results seem to reflect the shift to exploratory decision-making strategies and increased salience in maintaining purchase intentions despite referring to provided information and to highlight the involvement of social cognition-related regions in reference to customer ratings rather than price.