Variability of neuronal responses in the posterior superior temporal sulcus predicts choice behavior during social interactions

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00194.2021 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hamidreza Ramezanpour ◽

Marius Görner ◽

Peter Thier

Keyword(s):

Discharge Rate ◽

Fano Factor ◽

Superior Temporal Sulcus ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

The Other ◽

Gaze Following ◽

Behavioral Performance ◽

Neural Underpinnings ◽

Complex Social Behavior ◽

Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus

Recent studies have shown that neural activity in a well-defined patch in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (the "gaze following patch", GFP) of the primate brain is strongly modulated when the other´s gaze attracts the observer's attention to locations/objects, the other is looking at. Changes of the mean discharge rate of neurons in the monkey GFP indicate that they are involved in two distinct computations: the allocation of spatial attention guided by the other´s gaze vector and the suppression of gaze following if inappropriate in a given situation. Here we asked if and how the discharge variability of neurons in the GFP is related to the task and, furthermore, if it carries information on behavioral performance. To this end, we calculated the Fano factor as a measure of across-trial discharge variability as a function of time. Our results show that all neurons exhibiting a task-related discharge-rate modulation also exhibit a stimulus onset-dependent drop in the Fano factor. Furthermore, the amplitude of the Fano factor reduction is modulated by task condition and the neuron's selectivity in this regard. We found that these effects are directly related to the monkeys' behavioral performance in that the Fano factor is predictive about upcoming correct or wrong decisions. Our results indicate that neuronal discharge variability as gauged by the Fano-factor, hitherto primarily studied in the context of visual perception or motor control, is an informative measure also in studies of the neural underpinnings of complex social behavior.

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Perceiving social interactions in the posterior superior temporal sulcus

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1714471114 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 114 (43) ◽

pp. E9145-E9152 ◽

Cited By ~ 60

Author(s):

Leyla Isik ◽

Kami Koldewyn ◽

David Beeler ◽

Nancy Kanwisher

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Social World ◽

Superior Temporal Sulcus ◽

The Other ◽

Social Characteristics ◽

Visual Features ◽

Neural Correlate ◽

The Social ◽

Physical Interactions ◽

Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus

Primates are highly attuned not just to social characteristics of individual agents, but also to social interactions between multiple agents. Here we report a neural correlate of the representation of social interactions in the human brain. Specifically, we observe a strong univariate response in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) to stimuli depicting social interactions between two agents, compared with (i) pairs of agents not interacting with each other, (ii) physical interactions between inanimate objects, and (iii) individual animate agents pursuing goals and interacting with inanimate objects. We further show that this region contains information about the nature of the social interaction—specifically, whether one agent is helping or hindering the other. This sensitivity to social interactions is strongest in a specific subregion of the pSTS but extends to a lesser extent into nearby regions previously implicated in theory of mind and dynamic face perception. This sensitivity to the presence and nature of social interactions is not easily explainable in terms of low-level visual features, attention, or the animacy, actions, or goals of individual agents. This region may underlie our ability to understand the structure of our social world and navigate within it.

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Combining the Post-Cue Task and the Perceptual Identification Task to Assess Parallel Activation and Mutual Facilitation of Related Primes and Targets

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000396 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 84-97 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Demian Scherer ◽

Dirk Wentura

Keyword(s):

Semantic Priming ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

The Other ◽

Perceptual Identification ◽

Identification Task ◽

Priming Effects ◽

Priming Paradigm ◽

Parallel Activation ◽

Prime Target

Abstract. Recent theories assume a mutual facilitation in case of semantic overlap for concepts being activated simultaneously. We provide evidence for this claim using a semantic priming paradigm. To test for mutual facilitation of related concepts, a perceptual identification task was employed, presenting prime-target pairs briefly and masked, with an SOA of 0 ms (i.e., prime and target were presented concurrently, one above the other). Participants were instructed to identify the target. In Experiment 1, a cue defining the target was presented at stimulus onset, whereas in Experiment 2 the cue was not presented before the offset of stimuli. Accordingly, in Experiment 2, a post-cue task was merged with the perceptual identification task. We obtained significant semantic priming effects in both experiments. This result is compatible with the view that two concepts can both be activated in parallel and can mutually facilitate each other if they are related.

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Learning to See Biological Motion: Brain Activity Parallels Behavior

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/0898929042568569 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 16 (9) ◽

pp. 1669-1679 ◽

Cited By ~ 85

Author(s):

Emily D. Grossman ◽

Randolph Blake ◽

Chai-Youn Kim

Keyword(s):

Neural Activity ◽

Biological Motion ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Daily Practice ◽

Superior Temporal Sulcus ◽

Fusiform Face Area ◽

Face Area ◽

Perceptual Performance ◽

Trained Observers ◽

Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus

Individuals improve with practice on a variety of perceptual tasks, presumably reflecting plasticity in underlying neural mechanisms. We trained observers to discriminate biological motion from scrambled (nonbiological) motion and examined whether the resulting improvement in perceptual performance was accompanied by changes in activation within the posterior superior temporal sulcus and the fusiform “face area,” brain areas involved in perception of biological events. With daily practice, initially naive observers became more proficient at discriminating biological from scrambled animations embedded in an array of dynamic “noise” dots, with the extent of improvement varying among observers. Learning generalized to animations never seen before, indicating that observers had not simply memorized specific exemplars. In the same observers, neural activity prior to and following training was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neural activity within the posterior superior temporal sulcus and the fusiform “face area” reflected the participants' learning: BOLD signals were significantly larger after training in response both to animations experienced during training and to novel animations. The degree of learning was positively correlated with the amplitude changes in BOLD signals.

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The Speech-to-Song Illusion

Musical Illusions and Phantom Words ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190206833.003.0011 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 151-169

Author(s):

Diana Deutsch

Keyword(s):

Brain Regions ◽

Physical Characteristics ◽

The Other ◽

Scientific Thinking ◽

Musical Ability ◽

Stroke Patients ◽

Neural Underpinnings ◽

Musical Context

Chapter 10 begins with the author’s discovery that a phrase she had enunciated—“Sometimes behave so strangely”—when presented repeatedly, came to be heard as sung rather than spoken. This illusion is presented as a sound example. It shows that speech can be perceptually transformed into song without altering the sounds in any way, or by adding any musical context, but simply by repeating a phrase several times over. The speech-to-song illusion, as Deutsch named it, has no obvious explanation in terms of current scientific thinking about the neural underpinnings of speech and music. Many researchers believe that speech and music are each analyzed in independent modules, based on their physical characteristics. This view was supported by studies of stroke patients, some of whom lost their power of speech while their musical abilities remained intact, whereas others lost aspects of musical ability while their speech remained normal. In contrast, philosophers and composers throughout the ages have argued that a continuum extends from ordinary speech at one end to song at the other, with emotional and heavily intoned speech in between. Some recent brain-scanning studies have supported the idea that speech and song are subserved by the same circuitry, while others have shown that song involves more brain regions than speech. Evidence for these different views are currently being debated, but the exact explanation for the speech-to-song illusion remains a mystery.

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