The Neural Basis of Social Knowledge

 描述(申请人提供)：人类本质上是一个社会性物种。我们先进的社会情感技能被认为是我们巨大的文化进步和语言进化的基础。我们高超的社交技能的基础是对他人识别和获取知识的熟练程度的提高。参与面孔加工的一些皮质区域以及将传记知识和激励价值与特定面孔联系起来的较高级别区域的专业化程度增加，支持了社会知识。在我们之前的R01的这次更新中，我们建议扩展我们在前颞叶(ATL)的工作，以检查更专门的人知识回路。这个回路涉及腹侧ATL(VATL)的一个区域，当受损时，会导致人的记忆障碍。VATL面部贴片似乎在面部感知和个人记忆之间起到了接口作用，将不同身份的知觉表征与抽象的个人知识联系起来。然而，该地区并不是单独行动的。我们将使用多变量功能磁共振成像以及结构和功能连接性分析来检查灵活的相互作用 感知系统、情景记忆系统和享乐评估系统。该项目的成功将极大地促进我们对促进高级社会处理的基本神经机制的理解，并将对具有核心社会知识缺陷的疾病，如自闭症谱系障碍和精神分裂症具有重要的临床意义。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Humans are an intrinsically social species. Our advanced socio-emotional skills are thought to underpin our tremendous cultural advances as well as the evolution of language. Our superior social skills are underpinned by an increased proficiency in the identification of, and access to knowledge about other people. Social knowledge is supported by increased specialization in a number of cortical regions involved in face processing as well as higher-level regions involved in linking biographical knowledge as well as motivational value to specific faces. In this renewal of our prior R01, we propose to extend our work on the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) to examine a more specialized circuit for person knowledge. This circuit involves a region in the ventral ATL (vATL) that when damaged, leads to person memory deficits. The vATL face patch appears to serve as an interface between face perception and person memory, linking perceptual representations of distinct identities with abstract person knowledge. However this region does not act alone. We will use multivariate fMRI as well as structural and functional connectivity analyses to examine the flexible interaction of this region with perceptual systems, episodic memory systems, and hedonic valuation systems. Success in this project will significantly advance our understanding of the basic neural mechanisms that contribute to high-level social processing and will have important clinical implications for disorders that have core social knowledge deficits such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia.