Cerebral responses to self-initiated action during social interactions

Abstract

Social interaction involves self-initiated actions that engage subjective awareness of one's own volition. Individuals with social communication needs or social anxiety find it particularly difficult to initiate social interactions. However, extant studies have not specifically addressed how perceived exclusion may influence self-initiated actions during social interaction. As a first step to address this question, we scanned 24 healthy adults participating in a Cyberball game with two fictive players. By contrasting events of observing, receiving, and initiating ball toss during a scenario of fair game (FG) and of exclusion (EX), we examined the neural correlates of self-initiated action during social interactions. Behaviorally, participants were faster in catching but slower in tossing the ball in EX compared with FG, suggesting a burden during self-initiated actions during social exclusion. Tossing versus receiving (or observing) engaged higher activity during EX than FG in the precuneus and angular gyrus, regions that have been widely implicated in theory of mind processing and social emotions. Across subjects these cortical activities correlated positively with the difference between EX and FG in the percentage of trials where participants tossed the ball back to the same player (r = 0.69, p < 0.001). Together, the results suggested that, in healthy adults, social exclusion encumbered and engaged higher posterior cortical activations during self-initiated actions. The findings may facilitate future research of neural markers of social behavioral disorders.

The effects of age on cerebral responses to self-initiated actions during social interactions: An exploratory study

“…In imaging findings, we demonstrated the differences between EX and FG in the neural processes of self-initiated actions. Replicating earlier work with a smaller sample size [17], ball toss during EX as compared to FG engaged higher activity in bilateral temporal and occipital cortex, including the fusiform gyrus, anterior pre-SMA, right inferior frontal cortex, bilateral thalamus, bilateral inferior parietal cortex, including the temporal parietal junction, pgACC, dorsal ACC and midcingualte cortex. Age was associated with less activation of the pgACC in men and women combined.…”

“…Imaging studies showed that social exclusion as compared to inclusion engaged the insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and other prefrontal cortical regions [6,[10][11][12][13][14][15]; see [16] for a review), cortical circuits that have been implicated in processing negative emotions and salient events. In recent work using the Cyberball task, we showed that social exclusion, as compared to a "fair game" scenario, encumbered self-initiated actions and engaged distinct neural processes during self-initiated actions [17,18].…”

A novel risk variant block across introns 36–45 of CACNA1C for schizophrenia: a cohort-wise replication and cerebral region-wide validation study

“…The inferior temporal cortex is involved in complex visual processing, face perception, recognition of numbers and objects, social cognition, and memory (Conway, 2018). The precuneus is involved in mental imagery concerning the self (Lou et al ., 2004), episodic memory (Fletcher et al , 1995), and visuospatial imagery (Oshio et al , 2010), as well as mental effort (Zhang and Li, 2010, 2012) and social cognition (Wang et al ., 2019). Along with the precuneus, the PCC has been implicated in awareness, arousal (Le et al , 2019), and episodic memory (Nielsen et al , 2005).…”

Perceived burdensomeness and neural responses to ostracism in the Cyberball task

“…There were approximately 61 trials of observation in OB; 23 trials each of observation, ball tossed to, and from the participant in FG; and 51 trials of observation, and 6 trials each with ball tossed to and from the participant in EX. Data from a subsample of the current group was reported in previous studies (Wang et al, 2019a(Wang et al, , 2019b.…”

“…Previous studies have employed RT to assess behavioral responses to ostracism, with speeded and prolonged RT reflective of social approach and avoidance, respectively (Kothgassner et al, 2017;Will et al, 2016a). Behavioral performance in the Cyberball task has been investigated in relation to neural responses to ostracism in our previous work (Wang et al, 2019b) though it remained unclear whether PB also plays a role in modulating the RT. We tested the hypothesis that social exclusion would elicit activations in the AI, dACC/dmPFC, and MFG.…”