Representation of navigational affordances and ego-motion in the occipital place area

Humans effortlessly use vision to plan and guide navigation through the local environment, or "scene". A network of three cortical regions responds selectively to visual scene information, including the occipital (OPA), parahippocampal (PPA), and medial place areas (MPA) - but how this network supports visually-guided navigation is unclear. Recent evidence suggests that one region in particular, the OPA, supports visual representations for navigation, while PPA and MPA support other aspects of scene processing. However, most previous studies tested only static scene images, which lack the dynamic experience of navigating through scenes. We used dynamic movie stimuli to test whether OPA, PPA, and MPA represent two critical kinds of navigationally-relevant information: navigational affordances (e.g., can I walk to the left, right, or both?) and ego-motion (e.g., am I walking forward or backward? turning left or right?). We found that OPA is sensitive to both affordances and ego-motion, as well as the conflict between these cues - e.g., turning toward versus away from an open doorway. These effects were significantly weaker or absent in PPA and MPA. Responses in OPA were also dissociable from those in early visual cortex, consistent with the idea that OPA responses are not merely explained by lower-level visual features. OPA responses to affordances and ego-motion were stronger in the contralateral than ipsilateral visual field, suggesting that OPA encodes navigationally relevant information within an egocentric reference frame. Taken together, these results support the hypothesis that OPA contains visual representations that are useful for planning and guiding navigation through scenes.

Open dataset of theory of mind reasoning in early to middle childhood

Theory of mind (ToM) reasoning refers to the process by which we reason about the mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) of others. Here, we describe an open dataset of responses from children who completed a story booklet task for assessing ToM reasoning (n = 321 3-12-year-old children, including 64 (neurotypical) children assessed longitudinally and 68 autistic children). Children completed one of two versions of the story booklet task (Booklet 1 or 2). Both versions include two-alternative forced choice and free response questions that tap ToM concepts ranging in difficulty from reasoning about desires and beliefs to reasoning about moral blameworthiness and mistaken referents. Booklet 2 additionally includes items that assess understanding of sarcasm, lies, and second-order belief-desire reasoning. Compared to other ToM tasks, the booklet task provides relatively dense sampling of ToM reasoning within each child (Booklet 1: 41 items; Booklet 2: 65 items). Experimental sessions were video recorded and data were coded offline; the open dataset consists of children's accuracy (binary) on each item and, for many children (n = 171), transcriptions of free responses. The dataset also includes children's scores on standardized tests of receptive language and non-verbal IQ, as well as other demographic information. As such, this dataset is a valuable resource for investigating the development of ToM reasoning in early and middle childhood.

Neural correlates of theory of mind reasoning in congenitally blind children

Vision is an important source of information about other minds for sighted children, especially prior to the onset of language. Visually observed actions, eye gaze, and facial expressions of others provide information about mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and emotions. Does such experience contribute causally to the development of cortical networks supporting social cognition? To address this question we compared functional development of brain regions supporting theory of mind (ToM), as well as behavioral ToM reasoning, across congenitally blind (n=17) and sighted (n=114) children and adolescents (4-17 years old). We find that blind children in this age range show slightly lower ToM behavioral performance relative to sighted children. Likewise, the functional profile of ToM brain regions is qualitatively similar, but quantitatively weaker in blind relative to sighted children. Alongside prior research, these data suggest that vision facilitates, but is not necessary for, ToM development.

Preliminary evidence for selective cortical responses to music in one-month-old infants

Prior studies have observed selective neural responses in the adult human auditory cortex to music and speech that cannot be explained by the differing lower-level acoustic properties of these stimuli. Does infant cortex exhibit similarly selective responses to music and speech shortly after birth? To answer this question, we attempted to collect functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 45 sleeping infants (2.0- to 11.9-weeks-old) while they listened to monophonic instrumental lullabies and infant-directed speech produced by a mother. To match acoustic variation between music and speech sounds we (1) recorded music from instruments that had a similar spectral range as female infant-directed speech, (2) used a novel excitation-matching algorithm to match the cochleagrams of music and speech stimuli, and (3) synthesized "model-matched" stimuli that were matched in spectrotemporal modulation statistics to (yet perceptually distinct from) music or speech. Of the 36 infants we collected usable data from, 19 had significant activations to sounds overall compared to scanner noise. From these infants, we observed a set of voxels in non-primary auditory cortex (NPAC) but not in Heschl's Gyrus that responded significantly more to music than to each of the other three stimulus types (but not significantly more strongly than to the background scanner noise). In contrast, our planned analyses did not reveal voxels in NPAC that responded more to speech than to model-matched speech, although other unplanned analyses did. These preliminary findings suggest that music selectivity arises within the first month of life. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/c8IGFvzxudk. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Responses to music, speech, and control sounds matched for the spectrotemporal modulation-statistics of each sound were measured from 2- to 11-week-old sleeping infants using fMRI. Auditory cortex was significantly activated by these stimuli in 19 out of 36 sleeping infants. Selective responses to music compared to the three other stimulus classes were found in non-primary auditory cortex but not in nearby Heschl's Gyrus. Selective responses to speech were not observed in planned analyses but were observed in unplanned, exploratory analyses.

Emotion prediction as computation over a generative theory of mind

From sparse descriptions of events, observers can make systematic and nuanced predictions of what emotions the people involved will experience. We propose a formal model of emotion prediction in the context of a public high-stakes social dilemma. This model uses inverse planning to infer a person's beliefs and preferences, including social preferences for equity and for maintaining a good reputation. The model then combines these inferred mental contents with the event to compute 'appraisals': whether the situation conformed to the expectations and fulfilled the preferences. We learn functions mapping computed appraisals to emotion labels, allowing the model to match human observers' quantitative predictions of 20 emotions, including joy, relief, guilt and envy. Model comparison indicates that inferred monetary preferences are not sufficient to explain observers' emotion predictions; inferred social preferences are factored into predictions for nearly every emotion. Human observers and the model both use minimal individualizing information to adjust predictions of how different people will respond to the same event. Thus, our framework integrates inverse planning, event appraisals and emotion concepts in a single computational model to reverse-engineer people's intuitive theory of emotions. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Cognitive artificial intelligence'.

Desperation and inequality increase stealing: evidence from experimental microsocieties

People facing material deprivation are more likely to turn to acquisitive crime. It is not clear why it makes sense for them to do so, given that apprehension and punishment may make their situation even worse. Recent theory suggests that people should be more willing to steal if they are on the wrong side of a 'desperation threshold'; that is, a level of resources critical to wellbeing. Below such a threshold, people should pursue any risky behaviour that offers the possibility of a short route back above, and should be insensitive to the severity of possible punishments, since they have little left to lose. We developed a multi-round, multi-player economic game with a desperation threshold and the possibility of theft as well as cooperation. Across four experiments with 1000 UK and US adults, we showed that falling short of a desperation threshold increased stealing from other players, even when the payoff from stealing was negative on average. Within the microsocieties created in the game, the presence of more players with below-threshold resources produced low trust, driven by the experience of being stolen from. Contrary to predictions, our participants appeared to be somewhat sensitive to the severity of punishment for being caught trying to steal. Our results show, in an experimental microcosm, that some members of society falling short of a threshold of material desperation can have powerful social consequences.

Perceiving and pursuing legitimate power

How do people perceive and pursue legitimate power? For the social sciences, this question is venerable. Yet, for cognitive science, it offers fresh and generative opportunities to explore how adults evaluate legitimacy, how children learn to do so, and what difference legitimate power makes for people's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Habituation Reflects Optimal Exploration Over Noisy Perceptual Samples

From birth, humans constantly make decisions about what to look at and for how long. Yet, the mechanism behind such decision-making remains poorly understood. Here, we present the rational action, noisy choice for habituation (RANCH) model. RANCH is a rational learning model that takes noisy perceptual samples from stimuli and makes sampling decisions based on expected information gain (EIG). The model captures key patterns of looking time documented in developmental research: habituation and dishabituation. We evaluated the model with adult looking time collected from a paradigm analogous to the infant habituation paradigm. We compared RANCH with baseline models (no learning model, no perceptual noise model) and models with alternative linking hypotheses (Surprisal, KL divergence). We showed that (1) learning and perceptual noise are critical assumptions of the model, and (2) Surprisal and KL are good proxies for EIG under the current learning context.

Planning with Theory of Mind

Understanding Theory of Mind should begin with an analysis of the problems it solves. The traditional answer is that Theory of Mind is used for predicting others' thoughts and actions. However, the same Theory of Mind is also used for planning to change others' thoughts and actions. Planning requires that Theory of Mind consists of abstract structured causal representations and supports efficient search and selection from innumerable possible actions. Theory of Mind contrasts with less cognitively demanding alternatives: statistical predictive models of other people's actions, or model-free reinforcement of actions by their effects on other people. Theory of Mind is likely used to plan novel interventions and predict their effects, for example, in pedagogy, emotion regulation, and impression management.

Using child-friendly movie stimuli to study the development of face, place, and object regions from age 3 to 12 years

Scanning young children while they watch short, engaging, commercially-produced movies has emerged as a promising approach for increasing data retention and quality. Movie stimuli also evoke a richer variety of cognitive processes than traditional experiments, allowing the study of multiple aspects of brain development simultaneously. However, because these stimuli are uncontrolled, it is unclear how effectively distinct profiles of brain activity can be distinguished from the resulting data. Here we develop an approach for identifying multiple distinct subject-specific Regions of Interest (ssROIs) using fMRI data collected during movie-viewing. We focused on the test case of higher-level visual regions selective for faces, scenes, and objects. Adults (N = 13) were scanned while viewing a 5.6-min child-friendly movie, as well as a traditional localizer experiment with blocks of faces, scenes, and objects. We found that just 2.7 min of movie data could identify subject-specific face, scene, and object regions. While successful, movie-defined ssROIS still showed weaker domain selectivity than traditional ssROIs. Having validated our approach in adults, we then used the same methods on movie data collected from 3 to 12-year-old children (N = 122). Movie response timecourses in 3-year-old children's face, scene, and object regions were already significantly and specifically predicted by timecourses from the corresponding regions in adults. We also found evidence of continued developmental change, particularly in the face-selective posterior superior temporal sulcus. Taken together, our results reveal both early maturity and functional change in face, scene, and object regions, and more broadly highlight the promise of short, child-friendly movies for developmental cognitive neuroscience.

Selective responses to faces, scenes, and bodies in the ventral visual pathway of infants

Three of the most robust functional landmarks in the human brain are the selective responses to faces in the fusiform face area (FFA), scenes in the parahippocampal place area (PPA), and bodies in the extrastriate body area (EBA). Are the selective responses of these regions present early in development or do they require many years to develop? Prior evidence leaves this question unresolved. We designed a new 32-channel infant magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) coil and collected high-quality functional MRI (fMRI) data from infants (2-9 months of age) while they viewed stimuli from four conditions-faces, bodies, objects, and scenes. We find that infants have face-, scene-, and body-selective responses in the location of the adult FFA, PPA, and EBA, respectively, powerfully constraining accounts of cortical development.

Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships

Across human societies, people form "thick" relationships characterized by strong attachments, obligations, and mutual responsiveness. People in thick relationships share food utensils, kiss, or engage in other distinctive interactions that involve sharing saliva. We found that children, toddlers, and infants infer that dyads who share saliva (as opposed to other positive social interactions) have a distinct relationship. Children expect saliva sharing to happen in nuclear families. Toddlers and infants expect that people who share saliva will respond to one another in distress. Parents confirm that saliva sharing is a valid cue of relationship thickness in their children's social environments. The ability to use distinctive interactions to infer categories of relationships thus emerges early in life, without explicit teaching; this enables young humans to rapidly identify close relationships, both within and beyond families.

A size-adaptive 32-channel array coil for awake infant neuroimaging at 3 Tesla MRI

PURPOSE

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during infancy poses challenges due to practical, methodological, and analytical considerations. The aim of this study was to implement a hardware-related approach to increase subject compliance for fMRI involving awake infants. To accomplish this, we designed, constructed, and evaluated an adaptive 32-channel array coil.

METHODS

To allow imaging with a close-fitting head array coil for infants aged 1-18 months, an adjustable head coil concept was developed. The coil setup facilitates a half-seated scanning position to improve the infant's overall scan compliance. Earmuff compartments are integrated directly into the coil housing to enable the usage of sound protection without losing a snug fit of the coil around the infant's head. The constructed array coil was evaluated from phantom data using bench-level metrics, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performances, and accelerated imaging capabilities for both in-plane and simultaneous multislice (SMS) reconstruction methodologies. Furthermore, preliminary fMRI data were acquired to evaluate the in vivo coil performance.

RESULTS

Phantom data showed a 2.7-fold SNR increase on average when compared with a commercially available 32-channel head coil. At the center and periphery regions of the infant head phantom, the SNR gains were measured to be 1.25-fold and 3-fold, respectively. The infant coil further showed favorable encoding capabilities for undersampled k-space reconstruction methods and SMS techniques.

CONCLUSIONS

An infant-friendly head coil array was developed to improve sensitivity, spatial resolution, accelerated encoding, motion insensitivity, and subject tolerance in pediatric MRI. The adaptive 32-channel array coil is well-suited for fMRI acquisitions in awake infants.

Single-neuronal predictions of others' beliefs in humans

Human social behaviour crucially depends on our ability to reason about others. This capacity for theory of mind has a vital role in social cognition because it enables us not only to form a detailed understanding of the hidden thoughts and beliefs of other individuals but also to understand that they may differ from our own^1-3. Although a number of areas in the human brain have been linked to social reasoning^4,5 and its disruption across a variety of psychosocial disorders^6-8, the basic cellular mechanisms that underlie human theory of mind remain undefined. Here, using recordings from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others' beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations. By further following their encoding dynamics, we show how these cells represent the contents of the others' beliefs and accurately predict whether they are true or false. We also show how they track inferred beliefs from another's specific perspective and how their activities relate to behavioural performance. Together, these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another's beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.

Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices

A common view of learning in infancy emphasizes the role of incidental sensory experiences from which increasingly abstract statistical regularities are extracted. In this view, infant brains initially support basic sensory and motor functions, followed by maturation of higher-level association cortex. Here, we critique this view and posit that, by contrast and more like adults, infants are active, endogenously motivated learners who structure their own learning through flexible selection of attentional targets and active interventions on their environment. We further argue that the infant brain, and particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is well equipped to support these learning behaviors. We review recent progress in characterizing the function of the infant PFC, which suggests that, as in adults, the PFC is functionally specialized and highly connected. Together, we present an integrative account of infant minds and brains, in which the infant PFC represents multiple intrinsic motivations, which are leveraged for active learning.

Reduced neural selectivity for mental states in deaf children with delayed exposure to sign language

Language provides a rich source of information about other people's thoughts and feelings. Consequently, delayed access to language may influence conceptual development in Theory of Mind (ToM). We use functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioral tasks to study ToM development in child (n = 33, 4-12 years old) and adult (n = 36) fluent signers of American Sign Language (ASL), and characterize neural ToM responses during ASL and movie-viewing tasks. Participants include deaf children whose first exposure to ASL was delayed up to 7 years (n = 12). Neural responses to ToM stories (specifically, selectivity of the right temporo-parietal junction) in these children resembles responses previously observed in young children, who have similar linguistic experience, rather than those in age-matched native-signing children, who have similar biological maturation. Early linguistic experience may facilitate ToM development, via the development of a selective brain region for ToM.

Acute stress alters neural patterns of value representation for others

Acute stress is often evoked during social interactions, by feelings of threat or negative evaluation by other people. We also constantly interact with others while under stress - in the workplace or in private alike. However, it is not clear how stress affects social interactions. For one, individuals could become more selfish and focused on their own goals. On the other hand, individuals might also become more focused on affiliating with potential social partners, in order to secure their support. There is, indeed, accumulating behavioral evidence that prosocial behaviors increase rather than decrease under stress. Here, we tested the underlying brain processes of such findings, by assessing the effects of stress on the neural representations of (monetary) value for self and other. Participants (N ​= ​30; male, 18-40 years) played a gambling task for themselves and for another participant while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Each participant played the gambling task twice: once immediately following acute stress induction, and once in a control session. We compared neural patterns of value representation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and striatum using representational similarity analysis (RSA). We found that under stress, dmPFC and striatum showed higher dissimilarity between neural patterns underlying high and low value for the other. Dissimilarity of neural patterns underlying high and low value for the self was unaffected by stress. These findings suggest that participants track the magnitude of possible rewards for others more under stress, suggesting increased prosocial orientation.

The neuroscience of unmet social needs

John Cacioppo has compared loneliness to hunger or thirst in that it signals that one needs to act and repair what is lacking. This paper reviews Cacioppo's and others' contributions to our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying social motivation in humans and in other social species. We focus particularly on the dopaminergic reward system and try to integrate evidence from animal models and human research. In rodents, objective social isolation leads to increased social motivation, mediated by the brains' mesolimbic dopamine system. In humans, social rejection can lead to either increased or decreased social motivation, and is associated with activity in the insular cortex; while chronic loneliness is typically associated with decreased social motivation but has been associated with altered dopaminergic responses in the striatum. This mixed pattern of cross-species similarities and differences may arise from the substantially different methods used to study unmet social needs across species, and suggests the need for more direct and deliberate cross-species comparative research in this critically important domain.

Intersubject MVPD: Empirical comparison of fMRI denoising methods for connectivity analysis

Noise is a major challenge for the analysis of fMRI data in general and for connectivity analyses in particular. As researchers develop increasingly sophisticated tools to model statistical dependence between the fMRI signal in different brain regions, there is a risk that these models may increasingly capture artifactual relationships between regions, that are the result of noise. Thus, choosing optimal denoising methods is a crucial step to maximize the accuracy and reproducibility of connectivity models. Most comparisons between denoising methods require knowledge of the ground truth: of what is the ‘real signal’. For this reason, they are usually based on simulated fMRI data. However, simulated data may not match the statistical properties of real data, limiting the generalizability of the conclusions. In this article, we propose an approach to evaluate denoising methods using real (non-simulated) fMRI data. First, we introduce an intersubject version of multivariate pattern dependence (iMVPD) that computes the statistical dependence between a brain region in one participant, and another brain region in a different participant. iMVPD has the following advantages: 1) it is multivariate, 2) it trains and tests models on independent partitions of the real fMRI data, and 3) it generates predictions that are both between subjects and between regions. Since whole-brain sources of noise are more strongly correlated within subject than between subjects, we can use the difference between standard MVPD and iMVPD as a ‘discrepancy metric’ to evaluate denoising techniques (where more effective techniques should yield smaller differences). As predicted, the difference is the greatest in the absence of denoising methods. Furthermore, a combination of removal of the global signal and CompCorr optimizes denoising (among the set of denoising options tested).

Continuity in the neural system supporting children's theory of mind development: Longitudinal links between task-independent EEG and task-dependent fMRI

Children's explicit theory of mind (ToM) understandings change over early childhood. We examined whether there is longitudinal stability in the neurobiological bases of ToM across this time period. A previous study found that source-localized resting EEG alpha attributable to the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) was associated with children's performance on a battery of theory of mind tasks. Here, we investigated a small subset of children (N = 12) in that original study as a preliminary investigation of whether behavioral measures of ToM performance, and/or EEG localized to the DMPFC or RTPJ predicted ToM-specific fMRI responses 3.5 years later. Results showed that preschoolers' behavioral ToM-performance positively predicted later ToM-specific fMRI responses in the DMPFC. Preschoolers' resting EEG attributable to the DMPFC also predicted later ToM-specific fMRI responses in the DMPFC. Given the small sample, results represent a first exploration and require replication. Intriguingly, they suggest that early maturation of the area of the DMPFC related to ToM reasoning is positively linked with its specific recruitment for ToM reasoning later in development, affording implications for characterizing conceptual ToM development, and its underlying neural supports.

Development of predictive responses in theory of mind brain regions

When we watch movies, we consider the characters' mental states in order to understand and predict the narrative. Recent work in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) uses movie-viewing paradigms to measure functional responses in brain regions recruited for such mental state reasoning (the theory of mind ["ToM"] network). Here, two groups of young children (n = 30 3-4 years old, n = 26 6-7 years old) viewed a short animated movie twice while undergoing fMRI. As children get older, ToM brain regions were recruited earlier in time during the second presentation of the movie. This "narrative anticipation" effect is specific: there was no such effect in a control network of brain regions that responds just as robustly to the movie (the "Pain Matrix"). These results complement prior studies in adults that suggest that ToM brain regions play a role not just in inferring, but in actively predicting, other people's thoughts and feelings, and provide novel evidence that as children get older, their ToM brain regions increasingly make such predictions.

There's more to "sparkle" than meets the eye: Knowledge of vision and light verbs among congenitally blind and sighted individuals

We examined the contribution of first-person sensory experience to concepts by comparing the meanings of perception (visual/tactile) and emission (light/sound) verbs among congenitally blind (N = 25) and sighted speakers (N = 22). Participants judged semantic similarity for pairs of verbs referring to events of visual (e.g. to peek), tactile (e.g. to feel) and amodal perception (e.g. to perceive) as well as light (e.g. to shimmer) and sound (e.g. to boom) emission and manner of motion (to roll) (total word pairs, N = 2041). Relative to the sighted, blind speakers had higher agreement among themselves on touch perception and sound emission verbs. However, for visual verbs, the judgments of blind and sighted participants were indistinguishable, both in the semantic criteria used and subject-wise variability. Blind and sighted individuals alike differentiate visual perception verbs from verbs of touch and amodal perception and differentiate among acts of visual perception e.g. intense/continuous from brief acts of looking (e.g. peek vs. stare). Light emission verbs are differentiated according to intensity (blaze vs. glow) and stability (blaze vs. flash). Thus detailed knowledge of visual word meanings is acquired without first-person sensory access.

Parts-based representations of perceived face movements in the superior temporal sulcus

Facial motion is a primary source of social information about other humans. Prior fMRI studies have identified regions of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) that respond specifically to perceived face movements (termed fSTS), but little is known about the nature of motion representations in these regions. Here we use fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis to characterize the representational content of the fSTS. Participants viewed a set of specific eye and mouth movements, as well as combined eye and mouth movements. Our results demonstrate that fSTS response patterns contain information about face movements, including subtle distinctions between types of eye and mouth movements. These representations generalize across the actor performing the movement, and across small differences in visual position. Critically, patterns of response to combined movements could be well predicted by linear combinations of responses to individual eye and mouth movements, pointing to a parts-based representation of complex face movements. These results indicate that the fSTS plays an intermediate role in the process of inferring social content from visually perceived face movements, containing a representation that is sufficiently abstract to generalize across low-level visual details, but still tied to the kinematics of face part movements.

Social Origins of Cortical Face Areas

Recently acquired fMRI data from human and macaque infants provide novel insights into the origins of cortical networks specialized for perceiving faces. Data from both species converge: cortical regions responding preferentially to faces are present and spatially organized early in infancy, although fully selective face areas emerge much later. What explains the earliest cortical responses to faces? We review two proposed mechanisms: proto-organization for simple shapes in visual cortex, and an innate subcortical schematic face template. In addition, we propose a third mechanism: infants choose to look at faces to engage in positively valenced, contingent social interactions. Activity in medial prefrontal cortex during social interactions may, directly or indirectly, guide the organization of cortical face areas.

Denying humanity: The distinct neural correlates of blatant dehumanization

Recent behavioral work demonstrates that many people view low-status groups as less "evolved and civilized" than high-status groups. Are these people using blatant expressions of dehumanization simply to express strong dislike toward other groups? Or is blatant dehumanization a process distinct from other negative assessments? We tested these competing hypotheses using functional neuroimaging. Participants judged 10 groups (e.g., Europeans, Muslims, rats) on four scales: blatant dehumanization, dislike, dissimilarity and perceived within-group homogeneity. Consistent with expectations, neural responses when making ratings of dehumanization diverged from those when judging the same targets on the other related dimensions. Specifically, we found regions in the left inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) that were selectively parametrically modulated by dehumanization ratings. The pattern of responses in the left IFC was also consistent with animalistic dehumanization: high responses to low-status human groups and animals, and lower responses to high-status human groups. By contrast, a region in the posterior cingulate cortex was parametrically sensitive specifically to liking. We therefore demonstrate a double dissociation between brain activity associated with judgments of blatant dehumanization and judgments of dislike. (PsycINFO Database Record

Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years

Human adults recruit distinct networks of brain regions to think about the bodies and minds of others. This study characterizes the development of these networks, and tests for relationships between neural development and behavioral changes in reasoning about others’ minds (‘theory of mind’, ToM). A large sample of children (n = 122, 3–12 years), and adults (n = 33), watched a short movie while undergoing fMRI. The movie highlights the characters’ bodily sensations (often pain) and mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions), and is a feasible experiment for young children. Here we report three main findings: (1) ToM and pain networks are functionally distinct by age 3 years, (2) functional specialization increases throughout childhood, and (3) functional maturity of each network is related to increasingly anti-correlated responses between the networks. Furthermore, the most studied milestone in ToM development, passing explicit false-belief tasks, does not correspond to discontinuities in the development of the social brain.

Though adults’ brains process the internal states of others’ bodies versus others’ minds in distinct brain regions, it is not clear when this functional dissociation emerges. Here, authors study 3–12 year olds and show that these networks are distinct by age 3 and become even more distinct with age.

Multivariate pattern dependence

When we perform a cognitive task, multiple brain regions are engaged. Understanding how these regions interact is a fundamental step to uncover the neural bases of behavior. Most research on the interactions between brain regions has focused on the univariate responses in the regions. However, fine grained patterns of response encode important information, as shown by multivariate pattern analysis. In the present article, we introduce and apply multivariate pattern dependence (MVPD): a technique to study the statistical dependence between brain regions in humans in terms of the multivariate relations between their patterns of responses. MVPD characterizes the responses in each brain region as trajectories in region-specific multidimensional spaces, and models the multivariate relationship between these trajectories. We applied MVPD to the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and to the fusiform face area (FFA), using a searchlight approach to reveal interactions between these seed regions and the rest of the brain. Across two different experiments, MVPD identified significant statistical dependence not detected by standard functional connectivity. Additionally, MVPD outperformed univariate connectivity in its ability to explain independent variance in the responses of individual voxels. In the end, MVPD uncovered different connectivity profiles associated with different representational subspaces of FFA: the first principal component of FFA shows differential connectivity with occipital and parietal regions implicated in the processing of low-level properties of faces, while the second and third components show differential connectivity with anterior temporal regions implicated in the processing of invariant representations of face identity.

Human behavior is supported by systems of brain regions that exchange information to complete a task. This exchange of information between brain regions leads to statistical relationships between their responses over time. Most likely, these relationships do not link only the mean responses in two brain regions, but also their finer spatial patterns. Analyzing finer response patterns has been a key advance in the study of responses within individual regions, and can be leveraged to study between-region interactions. To capture the overall statistical relationship between two brain regions, we need to describe each region’s responses with respect to dimensions that best account for the variation in that region over time. These dimensions can be different from region to region. We introduce an approach in which each region’s responses are characterized in terms of region-specific dimensions that best account for its responses, and the relationships between regions are modeled with multivariate linear models. We demonstrate that this approach provides a better account of the data as compared to standard functional connectivity in two different experiments, and we use it to discover multiple dimensions within the fusiform face area that have different connectivity profiles with the rest of the brain.

Using individual functional channels of interest to study cortical development with fNIRS

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a noninvasive neuroimaging technique that could be uniquely effective for investigating cortical function in human infants. However, prior efforts have been hampered by the difficulty of aligning arrays of fNIRS optodes placed on the scalp to anatomical or functional regions of underlying cortex. This challenge can be addressed by identifying channels of interest in individual participants, and then testing the reliability of those channels' response profiles in independent data. Using this approach, cortical regions with preferential responses to faces versus scenes, and to scenes versus faces, were observed reliably in both adults and infants. By contrast, standard analysis techniques did not reliably identify significant responses to both categories in either age group. These results reveal scene-responsive regions, and confirm face-responsive regions, in preverbal infants. More generally, the analysis approach will be a robust and sensitive tool for future characterization of the early functional development of the human brain.

Mentalizing regions represent distributed, continuous, and abstract dimensions of others' beliefs

The human capacity to reason about others' minds includes making causal inferences about intentions, beliefs, values, and goals. Previous fMRI research has suggested that a network of brain regions, including bilateral temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), and medial prefrontal-cortex (MPFC), are reliably recruited for mental state reasoning. Here, in two fMRI experiments, we investigate the representational content of these regions. Building on existing computational and neural evidence, we hypothesized that social brain regions contain at least two functionally and spatially distinct components: one that represents information related to others' motivations and values, and another that represents information about others' beliefs and knowledge. Using multi-voxel pattern analysis, we find evidence that motivational versus epistemic features are independently represented by theory of mind (ToM) regions: RTPJ contains information about the justification of the belief, bilateral TPJ represents the modality of the source of knowledge, and VMPFC represents the valence of the resulting emotion. These representations are found only in regions implicated in social cognition and predict behavioral responses at the level of single items. We argue that cortical regions implicated in mental state inference contain complementary, but distinct, representations of epistemic and motivational features of others' beliefs, and that, mirroring the processes observed in sensory systems, social stimuli are represented in distinct and distributed formats across the human brain.

Illuminating the conceptual structure of the space of moral violations with searchlight representational similarity analysis

Characterizing how representations of moral violations are organized, cognitively and neurally, is central to understanding how people conceive and judge them. Past work has identified brain regions that represent morally relevant features and distinguish moral domains, but has not yet advanced a broader account of where and on what basis neural representations of moral violations are organized. With searchlight representational similarity analysis, we investigate where category membership drives similarity in neural patterns during moral judgment of violations from two key moral domains: Harm and Purity. Representations converge across domains in a network of regions resembling the mentalizing network. However, Harm and Purity violation representations respectively converge in different regions: precuneus (PC) and left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). Examining substructure within moral domains, Harm violations converge in PC regardless of subdomain (physical harms, psychological harms), while Purity subdomains (pathogen-related violations, sex-related violations) converge in distinct sets of regions - mirroring a dissociation observed in principal-component analysis of behavioral data. Further, we find initial evidence for representation of morally relevant features within these two domain-encoding regions. The present analyses offer a case study for understanding how organization within the complex conceptual space of moral violations is reflected in the organization of neural patterns across the cortex.

Parochial Empathy Predicts Reduced Altruism and the Endorsement of Passive Harm

Empathic failures are common in hostile intergroup contexts; repairing empathy is therefore a major focus of peacebuilding efforts. However, it is unclear which aspect of empathy is most relevant to intergroup conflict. Although trait empathic concern predicts prosociality in interpersonal settings, we hypothesized that the best predictor of meaningful intergroup attitudes and behaviors might not be the general capacity for empathy (i.e., trait empathy), but the difference in empathy felt for the in-group versus the out-group, or "parochial empathy." Specifically, we predicted that out-group empathy would inhibit intergroup harm and promote intergroup helping, whereas in-group empathy would have the opposite effect. In three intergroup contexts-Americans regarding Arabs, Hungarians regarding refugees, Greeks regarding Germans-we found support for this hypothesis. In all samples, in-group and out-group empathy had independent, significant, and opposite effects on intergroup outcomes, controlling for trait empathic concern.

Formalizing emotion concepts within a Bayesian model of theory of mind

Sensitivity to others' emotions is foundational for many aspects of human life, yet computational models do not currently approach the sensitivity and specificity of human emotion knowledge. Perception of isolated physical expressions largely supplies ambiguous, low-dimensional, and noisy information about others' emotional states. By contrast, observers attribute specific granular emotions to another person based on inferences of how she interprets (or 'appraises') external events in relation to her other mental states (goals, beliefs, moral values, costs). These attributions share neural mechanisms with other reasoning about minds. Situating emotion concepts in a formal model of people's intuitive theories about other minds is necessary to effectively capture humans' fine-grained emotion understanding.

Directed network discovery with dynamic network modelling

Cognitive tasks recruit multiple brain regions. Understanding how these regions influence each other (the network structure) is an important step to characterize the neural basis of cognitive processes. Often, limited evidence is available to restrict the range of hypotheses a priori, and techniques that sift efficiently through a large number of possible network structures are needed (network discovery). This article introduces a novel modelling technique for network discovery (Dynamic Network Modelling or DNM) that builds on ideas from Granger Causality and Dynamic Causal Modelling introducing three key changes: (1) efficient network discovery is implemented with statistical tests on the consistency of model parameters across participants, (2) the tests take into account the magnitude and sign of each influence, and (3) variance explained in independent data is used as an absolute (rather than relative) measure of the quality of the network model. In this article, we outline the functioning of DNM, we validate DNM in simulated data for which the ground truth is known, and we report an example of its application to the investigation of influences between regions during emotion recognition, revealing top-down influences from brain regions encoding abstract representations of emotions (medial prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus) onto regions engaged in the perceptual analysis of facial expressions (occipital face area and fusiform face area) when participants are asked to switch between reporting the emotional valence and the age of a face.

When minds matter for moral judgment: intent information is neurally encoded for harmful but not impure acts

Recent behavioral evidence indicates a key role for intent in moral judgments of harmful acts (e.g. assault) but not impure acts (e.g. incest). We tested whether the neural responses in regions for mental state reasoning, including the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), are greater when people evaluate harmful vs impure violations. In addition, using multivoxel pattern analysis, we investigated whether the voxel-wise pattern in these regions distinguishes intentional from accidental actions, for either kind of violation. The RTPJ was preferentially recruited in response to harmful vs impure acts. Moreover, although its response was equally high for intentional and accidental acts, the voxel-wise pattern in the RTPJ distinguished intentional from accidental acts in the harm domain but not the purity domain. Finally, we found that the degree to which the RTPJ discriminated between intentional and accidental acts predicted the impact of intent information on moral judgments but again only in the harm domain. These findings reveal intent to be a uniquely critical factor for moral evaluations of harmful vs impure acts and shed light on the neural computations for mental state reasoning.

Localizing Pain Matrix and Theory of Mind networks with both verbal and non-verbal stimuli

Functional localizer tasks allow researchers to identify brain regions in each individual's brain, using a combination of anatomical and functional constraints. In this study, we compare three social cognitive localizer tasks, designed to efficiently identify regions in the "Pain Matrix," recruited in response to a person's physical pain, and the "Theory of Mind network," recruited in response to a person's mental states (i.e. beliefs and emotions). Participants performed three tasks: first, the verbal false-belief stories task; second, a verbal task including stories describing physical pain versus emotional suffering; and third, passively viewing a non-verbal animated movie, which included segments depicting physical pain and beliefs and emotions. All three localizers were efficient in identifying replicable, stable networks in individual subjects. The consistency across tasks makes all three tasks viable localizers. Nevertheless, there were small reliable differences in the location of the regions and the pattern of activity within regions, hinting at more specific representations. The new localizers go beyond those currently available: first, they simultaneously identify two functional networks with no additional scan time, and second, the non-verbal task extends the populations in whom functional localizers can be applied. These localizers will be made publicly available.

Minding the Gap: Narrative Descriptions about Mental States Attenuate Parochial Empathy

In three experiments, we examine parochial empathy (feeling more empathy for in-group than out-group members) across novel group boundaries, and test whether we can mitigate parochial empathy with brief narrative descriptions. In the absence of individuating information, participants consistently report more empathy for members of their own assigned group than a competitive out-group. However, individualized descriptions of in-group and out-group targets significantly reduce parochial empathy by interfering with encoding of targets’ group membership. Finally, the descriptions that most effectively decrease parochial empathy are those that describe targets’ mental states. These results support the role of individuating information in ameliorating parochial empathy, suggest a mechanism for their action, and show that descriptions emphasizing targets’ mental states are particularly effective.