Poster Session III

Abstract

W47. Human Superior Temporal Sulcus Subserves both Concrete and Abstract Social Cognition in Typical DevelopmentMbemba Jabbi*, Ranjani Prabhakaran, Victor Ekuta, Katherine Damme, Brett Cropp, Katherine Roe, Jonathan Shane Kippenhan, Philip Kohn, Alex Martin, Karen F. BermanNational Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MarylandBackground: Lesion, electrophysiological and imaging studies in humans and non-human primates implicate the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) in mediating visuospatial awareness (Karnath 2001) and visual social information processing (Haxby et al. 2000). Millisecond-resolved STS oscillatory signals are implicated in decoding the emotional meaning of dynamic facial cues (Jabbi et al. 2014), and dysfunctions of the STS are associated with social cognitive deficits in autism, fragile X syndrome, and schizophrenia. Although the ability to decipher concrete social signals is shown to predict more complex social cognitive skills such as understanding other people’s mental states and intentions and adapting accordingly during social interactions (Ihnen et al. 1998), a convergent neural mechanism linking concrete and abstract social cognitive processes has not been identified. Here, we hypothesized that the magnitude of right STS responsiveness to concrete dynamic emotional cues would predict the neural network underpinnings of abstract social cognition.Methods: Participants: Eighteen typically developing children, ages 5-17 years (mean age=14.35 years; nine females) participated in two fMRI experiments. In experiment1, videos displaying highly concrete depictions of disgusting, pleasant and emotionally neutral facial expressions of gustatory experiences (Jabbi et al. 2007) were presented in a randomized event-related design during fMRI. Participants were required to watch the videos. In experiment2, videos of highly abstract (Weisberg et al. 2012) social and non-social scenes (moving geometric shapes symbolizing social interactions or routine mechanical operations, respectively) were presented to the same participants in a randomized event-related design. For both experiments, participants responded to a post stimulus button prompt after each trial Statistical Analyses: After preprocessing (8mm smoothing) and normalization using statistical parametric mapping (SPM5), one-sample T contrasts were run in SPM5 at the first level to localize BOLD reactivity to observing a) facial expressions of gustatory disgust or pleasure>neutral expressions as the contrast of interest for the concrete condition; and b) socially attributable interaction of geometric shapes>mechanical interaction as the contrast of interest for the abstract condition. The first level contrasts of experiment1 were then analyzed at the second level using a random effects analysis. We extracted right STS regional BOLD response values (percentage change) for each individual as elicited by concrete social cognition, and used these values as predictors of the same individuals’ whole-brain BOLD responses to abstract social cues at the second-level.Results: Viewing of concrete social cues resulted in BOLD response in bilateral STS, frontolimbic regions (bilateral amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus, midbrain and brainstem), as well as visual cortical regions, with the global maximum of activation being registered in the right STS [at MNI coordinate X, Y, Z=54, −44, 20] at p<0.001. The magnitude of BOLD response signals observed during viewing of gustatory facial emotions in the right STS, was found to be strongly predictive of the magnitude of BOLD response observed during abstract social attribution in the temporoparietal including STS, visual cortical areas, parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral amygdala and anterior insula, dorsolateral, dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices bilaterally at p<0.005 FDR corrected.Conclusions: Successful social information processing requires the intact functioning of a complex network of brain regions (Dolan, 2002; Adolphs 2010), but the neural signatures representing the human ability to decipher both concrete and abstract social signals remains largely undefined. Given the high prevalence of social cognitive dysfunctions such as autism and Fragile X syndrome coupled with a lack of well-defined neurobiological correlates of the associated social deficits, we took a novel developmental approach using the brain response patterns of the STS (a well-known social cognitive node) during concrete social cognition to predict regional BOLD response to abstract social cues. We showed that the magnitude of signal change in the right STS during concrete emotional processing was a strong predictor of the magnitude of an extensive network of sensorimotor and fronto-limbic regional response to abstract social cues in the same individuals. Such cross-task analyses, especially when combined with measures of social cognitive dysfunction in developmental cohorts, may hold promise for defining subtle network activation patterns that may serve as biomarkers for specific social cognitive dysfunctions in clinical populations such as autism spectrum disorder.Keywords: STS, Social Cognition, Developmental, fMRI.Disclosure: Nothing to Disclose.