Investigating Dynamic Neural Systems Underlying Changing Social Representations of Faces During Development

项目摘要 在社交世界中成功导航关键取决于我们如何感知人脸。表面是 我们从中提取与身份、年龄、性别、吸引力、 一个人的情绪状态和意图。所有这些社会线索帮助我们预测他人的行为 并指导我们如何对待它们。鉴于面部感知对我们的 社会功能，人们可能会期望看到成熟的能力和神经专业化，即使在年幼的婴儿。 然而，面部加工行为和神经表征的某些方面直到成年才成熟。 我们认为，面孔加工能力始终是基于社会发展的发展变化 任务（SDTs）和主要从属关系的方向。例如，儿童的特殊和差别待遇， 青春期是截然不同的。孩子们专注于学习自我掌握和社会 这在很大程度上取决于主要照顾者。相比之下，青少年正在发展 增加照顾者的自主权，因为他们参与信任的友谊和浪漫的伙伴关系， 同龄人因此，从属关系的焦点从根本上从父母转移到同龄人， 青春期我们认为，这种转变塑造了青少年从面孔中获得的信息类型，（例如， 感知新表情的能力--比如调情--尤其是同龄人的表情）。而且我们 我认为，青春期通过增加完成这些新任务的动机，对这一过程产生了因果影响。 SDT，这将需要在现有面部的神经网络配置内进行重组- 处理系统 为了验证这一假设，我们将测试青春期前的儿童，青春期早期和后期的青少年， 在一系列面部处理行为和功能磁共振成像任务中， 与幼儿期的SDT有关（例如，处理基本的面部表情），以及那些与 青春期（例如，处理复杂的情感表达，吸引力）。以前所未有的 纵向设计，我们将测试所有青少年每3个月长达2年，以捕捉每个人的 进入下一个青春期阶段的具体过渡。这将触发第二次测试会话的行为 和功能磁共振成像任务，以便我们可以确定青春期阶段的变化如何影响这些任务的表现， 任务和大脑网络的组织处理面孔。 这项创新的纵向研究将提供一个规范的发展轨迹的理解 参与构建和稳定社会信息处理的神经网络， 了解影响这一过程的核心机制。它也将有助于理解 面部感知在如此多的疾病中被破坏（例如，社交焦虑，抑郁症，精神分裂症，双相情感障碍 障碍，自闭症），影响社会互动和与他人的关系。

Project Summary Successful navigation through the social world critically depends on how we perceive a face. Faces are the pre-eminent social signal from which we extract information related to the identity, age, sex, attractiveness, emotional state, and intentions of a person. All of these social cues help us anticipate the behavior of others and guide our decisions about how to behave towards them. Given the importance of face perception to our social functioning, one might expect to see mature abilities and neural specialization even in young infants. However, some aspects of face processing behavior and neural representation are not mature until adulthood. We argue that face-processing abilities are always changing developmentally based on social developmental tasks (SDTs) and the orientation of primary affiliative relationships. For example, the SDTs of childhood and adolescence are dramatically different. Children are focused on learning self-mastery and societal expectations, while still largely depending on primary caregivers. In contrast, adolescents are developing increasing autonomy from caregivers as they engage in confiding friendships and romantic partnerships with peers. Thus, the focus of the affiliative relationships fundamentally shifts from parents to peers during adolescence. We argue that this shift shapes the kinds of information that adolescents garner from faces, (e.g., the ability to perceive new kinds of expressions - like flirtatious - especially in peer faces). Furthermore, we argue that puberty causally influences this process by increasing the motivation to accomplish these new SDTs, which will require a re-organization within the neural network configuration of the existing face- processing system. To test this hypothesis, we will test pre-pubertal children, adolescents in early and later stages of pubertal development, and post-pubertal young adults in a battery of face-processing behavioral and fMRI tasks that are related to SDTs of early childhood (e.g., processing basic facial expressions), and those related to SDTs of adolescence (e.g., processing complex emotional expressions, attractiveness). In an unprecedented longitudinal design, we will test all adolescents every 3 months for up to 2 years to capture each individual’s own specific transition into the next pubertal stage. This will trigger a second testing session of the behavioral and fMRI tasks so that we can determine how a change in pubertal stage influences performance on these tasks and on the organization of brain networks for processing faces. This innovative longitudinal study will provide an understanding of the normative developmental trajectories involved in structuring and stabilizing neural networks underlying social information processing and understanding core mechanisms that influence this process. It will also have relevance for understanding how face perception is disrupted in so many disorders (e.g., social anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism) that effect social interactions and relationships with other people.