Lifelong changes in the cerebral processing of social signals

幸福是建立在有益的社会互动的基础上的，而社会互动又依赖于一个人的可靠感知。S身份和情感状态。正在进行的研究的一部分？社会互动?这个项目提供了令人兴奋的关于大脑如何解码来自他人的社会信号的新见解。然而，大多数研究都是在年轻的大学生中进行的，并不能很好地转化为一般人群的大年龄范围。在这个提案中，我们的目标是研究衰老如何影响我们对来自他人的社会信号的感知。她的脸，声音和身体。我们将招募一大群健康的成年参与者（男女各占一半），年龄跨度很大（20至80岁）。这些参与者将看到一张人脸、一个声音或一个身体的示意图，并被要求决定：i)这个人是男是女；Ii)这个人是高兴还是生气。声音和图像将被操纵，以控制任务的难度，并确保所有参与者发现任务同样困难。我们将使用磁共振成像（MRI）来测量这些参与者在执行任务时的大脑活动。研究结果将首次全面揭示年龄是如何影响我们对他人的看法的。社交互动中的脸，声音和身体。我们将能够确定在什么年龄（如果有的话）我们对社会信号的感知变得不那么准确。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会信号是来自面部、声音还是身体，以及这些差异是否取决于手头的任务。这项研究对从事老龄化和社会认知研究的科学界具有重要意义。它也有可能改变临床实践，允许对随着年龄增长的社会交往中可能出现的损伤进行更好、更早的诊断。

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.