Neural Foundations for Understanding Social and Mechanical Concepts

Abstract

Motivated by neuropsychological investigations of category-specific impairments, many functional brain imaging studies have found distinct patterns of neural activity associated with different object categories. However, the extent to which these category-related activation patterns reflect differences in conceptual representation remains controversial. To investigate this issue, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to record changes in neural activity while subjects interpreted animated vignettes composed of simple geometric shapes in motion. Vignettes interpreted as conveying social interactions elicited a distinct and distributed pattern of neural activity, relative to vignettes interpreted as mechanical actions. This neural system included regions in posterior temporal cortex associated with identifying human faces and other biological objects. In contrast, vignettes interpreted as conveying mechanical actions resulted in activity in posterior temporal lobe sites associated with identifying manipulable objects such as tools. Moreover, social, but not mechanical, interpretations elicited activity in regions implicated in the perception and modulation of emotion (right amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Perceiving and understanding social and mechanical concepts depends, in part, on activity in distinct neural networks. Within the social domain, the network includes regions involved in processing and storing information about the form and motion of biological objects, and in perceiving, expressing, and regulating affective responses.

Impaired spontaneous anthropomorphizing despite intact perception and social knowledge

“…An emotional response to the stimulus film may normally activate a social schema (32), which is then reflected both in a richly emotional and social description of the stimulus and in the presence of narrative elements in answers to specific questions about the events of the film. This interpretation is consistent with other findings regarding the amygdala's role in processing social information, including functional imaging studies showing amygdala activity in response to similar animated videos in normal subjects (33,34).…”

Neural theory for the perception of causal actions

“…This paper proposes a new neural theory for the perception of such abstract motion stimuli and the perception of causality assuming physiologically plausible simple neural mechanisms. Consistent with previous work in functional imaging (Castelli et al, 2000;Blakemore & Decety, 2001;Fonlupt, 2003;Martin & Weisberg, 2003;Ohnishi et al, 2004;Schultz et al, 2004;Schubotz & von Cramon, 2004;Fugelsang et al, 2005;Reithler et al, 2007), we hypothesized that the perception of abstract action stimuli might be explained by the same neural mechanisms as the perception of naturalistic goal-directed movements, such as object-directed hand actions. Going substantially beyond this previous work, our model proposes concrete neural circuits that are computationally sufficient for the processing of real action stimuli and which reproduce successfully, at least qualitatively, fundamental trends observed in psychophysical experiments on perceptual causality.…”

“…It seems possible that such neurons are also involved in the representation of interactive movements, potentially also for abstract stimuli. In functional imaging studies it has been observed that cortical regions involved in the observation of natural actions, such as the superior temporal sulcus, and parietal and premotor cortex, might also be recruited during the observation and interpretation of highly abstract action stimuli (Castelli et al, 2000;Martin & Weisberg, 2003;Ohnishi et al, 2004;Schultz et al, 2004;Schubotz & von Cramon, 2004;Reithler, van Mier, Peters, & Goebel, 2007;Petroni, Baguear, & Della-Maggiore, 2010). However, beyond a localization of potentially relevant cortical areas, knowledge about detailed neural circuits underlying the perception of causality from action stimuli is completely lacking.…”

Toward an evolutionary perspective on conceptual representation: Species-specific calls activate visual and affective processing systems in the macaque

“…For example, functional brain-imaging studies have shown that tasks probing knowledge of animate things and social interactions activate a well defined network that includes regions in the posterior cortex associated with perceiving their visual form (including the fusiform face area) (12) and biological motion [superior temporal sulcus (STS)] (13), as well as limbic and paralimbic cortical areas involved in perceiving and modulating affect (especially the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex) (11,14). Neural responses in these regions are elicited by a variety of input modalities, such as visual (12,15) or auditory (16,17), and by imagining (18) and thinking about objects and social interactions (19), providing additional support for the idea that the response of these areas is associated with object concept type, not the physical features of the stimulus.…”