Dataset Information

Interpretation of Social Interactions: Functional Imaging of Cognitive-Semiotic Categories During Naturalistic Viewing.

ABSTRACT: Social interactions arise from patterns of communicative signs, whose perception and interpretation require a multitude of cognitive functions. The semiotic framework of Peirce's Universal Categories (UCs) laid ground for a novel cognitive-semiotic typology of social interactions. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 16 volunteers watched a movie narrative encompassing verbal and non-verbal social interactions. Three types of non-verbal interactions were coded ("unresolved," "non-habitual," and "habitual") based on a typology reflecting Peirce's UCs. As expected, the auditory cortex responded to verbal interactions, but non-verbal interactions modulated temporal areas as well. Conceivably, when speech was lacking, ambiguous visual information (unresolved interactions) primed auditory processing in contrast to learned behavioral patterns (habitual interactions). The latter recruited a parahippocampal-occipital network supporting conceptual processing and associative memory retrieval. Requesting semiotic contextualization, non-habitual interactions activated visuo-spatial and contextual rule-learning areas such as the temporo-parietal junction and right lateral prefrontal cortex. In summary, the cognitive-semiotic typology reflected distinct sensory and association networks underlying the interpretation of observed non-verbal social interactions.

SUBMITTER: Wolf D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6102316 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Interpretation of Social Interactions: Functional Imaging of Cognitive-Semiotic Categories During Naturalistic Viewing.

Wolf Dhana D Mittelberg Irene I Rekittke Linn-Marlen LM Bhavsar Saurabh S Zvyagintsev Mikhail M Haeck Annina A Cong Fengyu F Klasen Martin M Mathiak Klaus K

Frontiers in human neuroscience 20180814

Social interactions arise from patterns of communicative signs, whose perception and interpretation require a multitude of cognitive functions. The semiotic framework of Peirce's Universal Categories (UCs) laid ground for a novel cognitive-semiotic typology of social interactions. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 16 volunteers watched a movie narrative encompassing verbal and non-verbal social interactions. Three types of non-verbal interactions were coded ("unresolved," "non ...[more]

PMID: 30154703

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Project description:Social behaviour is coordinated by a network of brain regions, including those involved in the perception of social stimuli and those involved in complex functions like inferring perceptual and mental states and controlling social interactions. The properties and function of many of these regions in isolation is relatively well-understood, but less is known about how these regions interact whilst processing dynamic social interactions. To investigate whether the functional connectivity between brain regions is modulated by social context, we collected functional MRI (fMRI) data from male monkeys (Macaca mulatta) viewing videos of social interactions labelled as "affiliative", "aggressive", or "ambiguous". We show activation related to the perception of social interactions along both banks of the superior temporal sulcus, parietal cortex, medial and lateral frontal cortex, and the caudate nucleus. Within this network, we show that fronto-temporal functional connectivity is significantly modulated by social context. Crucially, we link the observation of specific behaviours to changes in functional connectivity within our network. Viewing aggressive behaviour was associated with a limited increase in temporo-temporal and a weak increase in cingulate-temporal connectivity. By contrast, viewing interactions where the outcome was uncertain was associated with a pronounced increase in temporo-temporal, and cingulate-temporal functional connectivity. We hypothesise that this widespread network synchronisation occurs when cingulate and temporal areas coordinate their activity when more difficult social inferences are being made.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:Processing social information from our environment requires the activation of several brain regions, which are concentrated within the frontal and temporal lobes. However, little is known about how these areas interact to facilitate the processing of different social interactions. Here we show that functional connectivity within and between the frontal and temporal lobes is modulated by social context. Specifically, we demonstrate that viewing social interactions where the outcome was unclear is associated with increased synchrony within and between the cingulate cortex and temporal cortices. These findings suggest that the coordination between the cingulate and temporal cortices is enhanced when more difficult social inferences are being made.

Project description:Naturalistic stimuli, including movie, music, and speech, have been increasingly applied in the research of neuroimaging. Relative to a resting-state or single-task state, naturalistic stimuli can evoke more intense brain activities and have been proved to possess higher test–retest reliability, suggesting greater potential to study adaptive human brain function. In the current research, naturalistic functional magnetic resonance imaging (N-fMRI) has been a powerful tool to record brain states under naturalistic stimuli, and many efforts have been devoted to study the high-level semantic features from spatial or temporal representations via N-fMRI. However, integrating both spatial and temporal characteristics of brain activities for better interpreting the patterns under naturalistic stimuli is still underexplored. In this work, a novel hybrid learning framework that comprehensively investigates both the spatial (via Predictive Model) and the temporal [via convolutional neural network (CNN) model] characteristics of the brain is proposed. Specifically, to focus on certain relevant regions from the whole brain, regions of significance (ROS), which contain common spatial activation characteristics across individuals, are selected via the Predictive Model. Further, voxels of significance (VOS), whose signals contain significant temporal characteristics under naturalistic stimuli, are interpreted via one-dimensional CNN (1D-CNN) model. In this article, our proposed framework is applied onto the N-fMRI data during naturalistic classical/pop/speech audios stimuli. The promising performance is achieved via the Predictive Model to differentiate the different audio categories. Especially for distinguishing the classic and speech audios, the accuracy of classification is up to 92%. Moreover, spatial ROS and VOS are effectively obtained. Besides, temporal characteristics of the high-level semantic features are investigated on the frequency domain via convolution kernels of 1D-CNN model, and we effectively bridge the “semantic gap” between high-level semantic features of N-fMRI and low-level acoustic features of naturalistic audios in the frequency domain. Our results provide novel insights on characterizing spatiotemporal patterns of brain activities via N-fMRI and effectively explore the high-level semantic features under naturalistic stimuli, which will further benefit the understanding of the brain working mechanism and the advance of naturalistic stimuli clinical application.

Dataset Information

Interpretation of Social Interactions: Functional Imaging of Cognitive-Semiotic Categories During Naturalistic Viewing.

Publications

Interpretation of Social Interactions: Functional Imaging of Cognitive-Semiotic Categories During Naturalistic Viewing.

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