Neural similarity between mentalizing and live social interaction during the transition to adolescence

Abstract

Social interactions are essential for human development, yet little neuroimaging research has examined their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms using socially interactive paradigms during childhood and adolescence. Recent neuroimaging research has revealed activity in the mentalizing network when children engage with a live social partner, even when mentalizing is not required. While this finding suggests that social‐interactive contexts may spontaneously engage mentalizing, it is not a direct test of how similarly the brain responds to these two contexts. The current study used representational similarity analysis on data from 8‐ to 14‐year‐olds who made mental and nonmental judgments about an abstract character and a live interaction partner during fMRI. A within‐subject, 2 (Mental/Nonmental) × 2 (Peer/Character) design enabled us to examine response pattern similarity between conditions, and estimate fit to three conceptual models of how the two contexts relate: (1) social interaction and mentalizing about an abstract character are represented similarly; (2) interactive peers and abstract characters are represented differently regardless of the evaluation type; and (3) mental and nonmental states are represented dissimilarly regardless of target. We found that the temporal poles represent mentalizing and peer interactions similarly (Model 1), suggesting a neurocognitive link between the two in these regions. Much of the rest of the social brain exhibits different representations of interactive peers and abstract characters (Model 2). Our findings highlight the importance of studying social‐cognitive processes using interactive approaches, and the utility of pattern‐based analyses for understanding how social‐cognitive processes relate to each other.

Neural similarity in nucleus accumbens during decision‐making for the self and a best friend: Links to adolescents' self‐reported susceptibility to peer influence and risk taking

“…Most developmental neuroimaging studies are premised on the presumed distinctiveness between social categories and tend to compare the neural activation between conditions of a study and conclude that relative differences in brain activation reveal functional dissociations (e.g., if a brain region shows more or less activation for self‐oriented versus peer‐oriented decision‐making, it is assumed to represent self‐ versus peer‐related functions). However, the world consists of continuous dimensions, and the human brain efficiently represents graded social information (Merchant et al, 2022 ; Popal et al, 2020 ; Weaverdyck et al, 2020 ). Using pattern‐based multivariate fMRI analysis such as the RSA can detect the psychological distance between many social categories in adolescents, furthering our understanding of individual differences in adolescent brain development and social behaviors in complex developmental contexts.…”

“…To compute the voxel-wise representational similarity between decision-making for the self and best friends, we conducted a pairwise correlation between the neural responses at the voxel level for each subject in each ROI (see Figure 3b). Similar method can be found in previous studies (Merchant et al, 2022;O'Hearn et al, 2020). Within each matrix, only the upper triangular portion of the voxel-wise pattern similarity matrix was used for computing similarity coefficients, since the diagonal of a correlation matrix is uninformative, and the lower triangular portion is redundant with the upper.…”

Social anxiety, mentalizing and social distance preference: A preliminary psychometric evaluation

“…Mentalization plays a crucial role in shaping social interactive behaviors (Li et al, 2023;Merchant, Alkire & Redcay, 2022). In the current study, we aimed to assess the relationship between mentalization traits and abilities of individuals in various interactive contexts, concentrating on the association between social anxiety, psychometric traits, and distance preference.…”