Neural substrates of shared visual experiences: a hyperscanning fMRI study

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Cognition
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Sharing experiences is a fundamental aspect of human social cognition.
• Visual experience involves directing attention and inferring mental states.
• Joint attention (JA) and mentalizing are hypothesized to mediate shared visual experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying shared visual experiences.
• To test the hypothesis that JA and mentalizing mediate visual experience sharing.
• To identify brain regions involved in coordinating shared attention and mental state inference.

Main Methods:

• Hyperscanning functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with 44 healthy adults.
• Spoken-language-cued spatial and feature-based joint attention (JA) tasks.
• Analysis of inter-individual neural synchronization during shared visual tasks.

Main Results:

• Neural synchronization was observed in the right anterior insular cortex (AIC)-inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) complex (a core node of JA and salience network) and the right posterior superior temporal sulcus.
• The right AIC-IFG, right temporoparietal junction, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (core components for mentalization and the default mode network (DMN)) showed synchronization, indicating shared belief of the situation.
• Coherent coordination between the DMN and salience network, linked by the right AIC-IFG, was identified.

Conclusions:

• Shared visual experiences are underpinned by coordinated neural activity between the default mode network (DMN) and salience network.
• The right AIC-IFG plays a crucial role in linking JA and mentalizing networks for shared visual experiences.
• Neural synchronization in specific brain regions reflects the cognitive processes of joint attention and mentalizing during shared experiences.