The posterior Cerebellum is involved in constructing Social Action Sequences: An fMRI Study
The posterior Cerebellum is involved in constructing Social Action Sequences: An fMRI Study
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-019-46962-7
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发表时间：
2019-07-31
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Van Overwalle, Frank
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Heleven, Elien;van Dun, Kim;Van Overwalle, Frank
社会神经科学在很大程度上忽视了小脑的作用，尽管它在与社会功能和对他人精神状态（如信念）的推断有关的广泛任务和神经系统疾病中具有重要意义。一种假说认为，在人类进化过程中，小脑的功能从仅仅协调流畅的运动和动作序列演变为解释动作序列，而没有明显的运动对社会理解很重要。本研究引入了新的任务，调查小脑在排序中的作用，其中参与者在功能性神经成像（fMRI）过程中产生了正确的时间顺序的新的或众所周知的事件故事，有或没有社会元素。结果显示，强小脑激活过程中，所有事件类型的订单生成相比，被动观看或阅读事件。更重要的是，与常规社交和非社交（机械）事件相比，涉及真实或错误信念的新社交事件在双侧小脑后区（1脚和2脚）显示出更强的激活。这证实了小脑后部在理解和构建与社会理解相关的正确动作序列顺序方面的关键作用。目前的任务和结果可能有助于未来小脑功能障碍的诊断和治疗。
Social neuroscience largely ignored the role of the cerebellum, despite its implications in a broad range of tasks and neurological disorders related to social functioning and inferences on others' mental state such as beliefs. One hypothesis states that during human evolution, the cerebellum's function evolved from a mere coordinator of fluent sequences of motions and actions, to an interpreter of action sequences without overt movements that are important for social understanding. The present study introduces new tasks to investigate the role of the cerebellum in sequencing, in which participants generated the correct chronological order of new or well-known event stories with or without social elements during functional neuroimaging (fMRI). Results showed strong cerebellar activation during order generation for all event types compared to passive viewing or reading events. More importantly, new social events involving true or false beliefs showed stronger activation in the bilateral posterior cerebellum (Crus 1 and Crus 2) compared to routine social and non-social (mechanical) events. This confirms the critical role of the posterior cerebellum in the understanding and construction of the correct order of action sequences relevant for social understanding. The present tasks and results may facilitate diagnoses and treatments of cerebellar dysfunctions in the future.