Different impressions of other agents obtained through social interaction uniquely modulate dorsal and ventral pathway activities in the social human brain

Abstract

Internal (neuronal) representations in the brain are modified by our experiences, and this phenomenon is not unique to sensory and motor systems. Here, we show that different impressions obtained through social interaction with a variety of agents uniquely modulate activity of dorsal and ventral pathways of the brain network that mediates human social behavior. We scanned brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 16 healthy volunteers when they performed a simple matching-pennies game with a human, human-like android, mechanical robot, interactive robot, and a computer. Before playing this game in the scanner, participants experienced social interactions with each opponent separately and scored their initial impressions using two questionnaires. We found that the participants perceived opponents in two mental dimensions: one represented "mind-holderness" in which participants attributed anthropomorphic impressions to some of the opponents that had mental functions, while the other dimension represented "mind-readerness" in which participants characterized opponents as intelligent. Interestingly, this "mind-readerness" dimension correlated to participants frequently changing their game tactic to prevent opponents from envisioning their strategy, and this was corroborated by increased entropy during the game. We also found that the two factors separately modulated activity in distinct social brain regions. Specifically, mind-holderness modulated activity in the dorsal aspect of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal and posterior paracingulate cortices, while mind-readerness modulated activity in the ventral aspect of TPJ and the temporal pole. These results clearly demonstrate that activity in social brain networks is modulated through pre-scanning experiences of social interaction with a variety of agents. Furthermore, our findings elucidated the existence of two distinct functional networks in the social human brain. Social interaction with anthropomorphic or intelligent-looking agents may distinctly shape the internal representation of our social brain, which may in turn determine how we behave for various agents that we encounter in our society.

An integrative neural model of social perception, action observation, and theory of mind

“…Different regions in the TPJ are also found to serve somewhat different theory-of-mind functions. Takahashi et al (2014) found that the dorsal aspect of the TPJ is related to judging how much an agent has mental functions, while the ventral aspect of the TPJ is related to judging the intelligence of an agent.…”

Neural and sympathetic activity associated with exploration in decision-making: further evidence for involvement of insula

“…On the basis of previous studies (Lee et al, 2004; Seo and Lee, 2008; Baek et al, 2013; Takahashi et al, 2013, 2014), we quantitatively represented the degree of exploration by using entropy, which is a concept in information theory (Shannon, 1948). Specifically, we calculated the conditional entropy representing the degree of dependence on the immediately previous outcomes in choices of options.…”

Development of artificial empathy

“…6. fMRI of brain regions where activities were modulated by "mind-holderness" (red) and "mind-readerness" (blue) (Takahashi et al, 2014). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)…”

“…The x-axis indicates "mind-holderness," and the y-axis indicates "mind-readerness" (see text). The score of PCA components for each opponent represents the mean value for all participants (Takahashi et al, 2014). and network structure are far from our current understanding.…”

“…Recently, Takahashi et al (2014) showed how social interactions with different agents affect the impressions of mental capabilities such as mind-holderness and mind-readerness. They prepared five kinds of social agents: a human, an android (Actoroid F), a mechanical humanoid (infanoid), a pet-like robot (Keepon), and a computer that were opponents of the matching-penny game presented in an fMRI scanner.…”