Lifelong changes in the cerebral processing of social signals

幸福感建立在回报社会互动的基础上，而社会互动又取决于对一个人的可靠感知--S的身份和情感状态。正在进行的研究部分？社会互动？该项目提供了令人兴奋的关于大脑如何解码来自其他人的社交信号的新见解。然而，这项研究大多是在年轻的大学生中进行的，并不能很好地解释到普通人群的大年龄范围。在这项研究中，我们旨在研究年龄如何影响我们对另一个人--S的脸、声音和身体--的社交信号的感知。我们将招募一大批健康的成年参与者(一半是男性，一半是女性)，年龄跨度很大(20到80岁)。这些参与者将被呈现给一个人的脸、声音或身体的示意图，并将被要求决定：i)此人是男性还是女性；ii)此人是快乐的还是愤怒的。声音和图像将被处理，以控制任务的难度，并确保所有参与者都发现任务同样困难。我们将使用磁共振成像(MRI)测量这些参与者在执行任务时的大脑活动。结果将首次提供关于年龄如何影响我们对其他人的看法的全面图景？社交互动中的脸部、声音和身体。我们将能够确定我们对社交信号的感知在什么年龄(如果有的话)变得不那么准确。此外，我们将能够确定这些与年龄相关的差异是否取决于社交信号是来自面部、声音还是身体，以及这些差异是否取决于手头的任务。这项研究对于致力于老龄化和社会认知的科学界来说很重要。它还有可能改变临床实践，允许更好地、更早地诊断随着年龄增长可能出现的社会互动障碍。

Wellbeing is grounded in rewarding social interactions that in turn depend on the reliable perception of a person?s identity and affective state. Ongoing research part of the ?Social Interactions? project provides exciting new insight on how the brain decodes social signals from other persons. However most of this research is conducted in young university students, and does not translate well to the large age-range of the general population.In this proposal we aim to study how ageing affects our perception of social signals from another person?s face, voice and body. We will recruit a large group of healthy adult participants (half male and half female) with ages spanning a wide range (20 to 80 years old). These participants will be presented with a face, a voice or a schematic picture of a body and will be asked to decide: i) whether the person is male or female; ii) whether the person is happy or angry. Sound and images will be manipulated in order to control task difficulty, and ensure that all participants find the task equally difficult. We will measure the brain activity of these participants using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) while they perform the tasks.Results will provide for the first time a comprehensive picture of how age affects the way we perceive other persons? face, voice and body during social interactions. We will be able to determine at what age (if any) our perception of social signals become less accurate. In addition, we will be able to determine if these age-related differences depends on whether social signals originate from the face, the voice or the body and if the differences depend on the task at hand. This research is important for the scientific community working on aging and social cognition. It has also the potential to change clinical practice by permitting a better, earlier diagnostic of possible impairments in social interactions with increasing age.