Dynamic approaches to understanding social cognitive aging: A social network neuroscience approach

项目总结 社会联系对促进健康老龄化至关重要，包括延缓发病 阿尔茨海默病(AD)。发展和维护社会关系有赖于 社会认知功能--人们理解、储存和应用的过程 关于其他人的信息。然而，健康的衰老和阿尔茨海默氏症与 社会认知功能。确定这种下降背后的机制是至关重要的 最终改善AD的临床病程。神经科学是唯一适合于 确定这些机制是因为社交行为背后的大脑区域 被很好地刻画出来了。然而，这一领域的有限工作在以下方面做得不够 阐明大脑激活如何与老年人的社会认知缺陷有关。一 原因可能是它依赖于相对狭隘的大脑激活和 贫乏的刺激，忽视了大脑功能和社会功能的动态本质 互动。目前的提案通过应用尖端技术来解决这些差距 方法从网络神经科学领域到社会认知老龄化，考察 大脑网络的年龄相关变化--大脑中负责交流的区域的集合 彼此之间不成比例的更多--影响社会认知功能。使用这个 新的社交网络神经科学框架将最终改变我们的理解 健康衰老和阿尔茨海默病扰乱社会认知功能的机制。在……里面 目的1我们比较了集中在特定大脑中激活的传统方法 从区域到大脑网络的方法，以确定哪一个与社会更好地相关 认知缺陷(例如，心理理论；推断他人心理状态的能力)。目标2 探索老年人不太稳定的大脑网络是否能预测他们的心理理论 赤字。此目标的探索性目标是确定动态(更多 自然主义)刺激对与年龄相关的社会认知缺陷的洞察力比 传统的静态刺激。最后，目标3挑战了当前的假设，即老年人的 社会认知缺陷仅限于他们的大脑在执行任务时如何参与。具体来说， 我们检查了老年人的基线大脑网络结构(在休息状态下) 预测他们随后的任务绩效，并将此问题扩展到AD样本。 这项拟议的研究结合了尖端的网络神经科学方法和社会 认知衰老促进我们对健康衰老和阿尔茨海默病的理解。归根结底，这 该项目将帮助确定新的干预目标，以减缓AD的进展。

PROJECT SUMMARY Social connectedness is critical for promoting healthy aging, including delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Developing and maintaining social relationships relies on social cognitive function – the process by which people understand, store, and apply information about others. However, healthy aging and AD are associated with declines in social cognitive function. Identifying the mechanisms underlying this decline is essential for ultimately improving the clinical course of AD. Neuroscience is uniquely suited to identify these mechanisms because the brain regions underlying social behavior have been well-characterized. However, the limited work in this domain has fallen short in elucidating how brain activation relates to older adults’ social cognitive deficits. One reason for this might be its reliance on relatively narrow measures of brain activation and impoverished stimuli, which neglect the dynamic nature of brain function and of social interactions. The current proposal addresses these gaps by applying cutting-edge methods from the field of network neuroscience to social cognitive aging to examine how age-related changes in brain networks – collections of brain regions that communicate disproportionately more with each other – affect social cognitive function. Using this novel social network neuroscience framework will ultimately transform our understanding of the mechanisms by which healthy aging and AD disrupt social cognitive function. In Aim 1, we compare traditional approaches of focusing on activation in specific brain regions to a brain networks approach in order to determine which better relates to social cognitive deficits (e.g., theory of mind; the ability to infer others’ mental states). Aim 2 explores whether older adults’ less stable brain networks predict their theory of mind deficits. An exploratory goal of this aim is to determine whether dynamic (more naturalistic) stimuli provide greater insight into age-related social cognitive deficits than traditional, static stimuli. Finally, Aim 3 challenges current assumptions that older adults’ social cognitive deficits are limited to how their brains engage during tasks. Specifically, we examine whether older adults’ baseline brain network structure (during resting state) predicts their subsequent task performance, and extend this question to an AD sample. The proposed study combines cutting-edge network neuroscience methods with social cognitive aging to advance our understanding of healthy aging and AD. Ultimately, this project will help identify novel targets for intervention to slow the progression of AD.