Basis functions for complex social decisions in dorsomedial frontal cortex
Marco K Wittmann1,2,3, Yongling Lin4,5, Deng Pan6
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK. m.wittmann@ucl.ac.uk.
Nature
|March 13, 2025
Summary
The brain represents social interactions using compressed neural codes in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These codes capture interaction types, not just individual identities, revealing deep analogies in neural processing.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Social Psychology
Background:
- The brain navigates social environments by representing information in an agent-centric manner, tagging knowledge to individuals like 'oneself' or 'other'.
- Key brain regions involved in social cognition include the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how the brain represents combinatorial possibilities of social interactions.
- To determine if neural representations in the dmPFC and ACC align with interaction types or individual identities.
Main Methods:
- Utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) across four studies.
- Employed behavioral experiments and a social group decision-making task.
Main Results:
- The dmPFC and ACC represent combinatorial possibilities for social interaction.
- These representations are in a compressed format, analogous to basis functions used in other domains.
- Neural representations align with social interaction types, not individual identities.
Conclusions:
- The brain encodes social interactions based on situational possibilities rather than solely on individual identities.
- Deep analogies exist between neural coding schemes in sensory/motor domains and the construction of social identity.
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