Brain bases of real-time social interaction: A meta-analytic investigation of human neuroimaging studies
This repository contains data, code, and hands-on example notebooks to accompany the submitted manuscript entitled "Brain bases of real-time social interaction: A meta-analytic investigation of human neuroimaging studies".
WalkThroughExamples.ipynb is interactive Python Jupyter Notebook that provides a hands-on walk through the different analyses conducted for this project. It includes code for running coordinate-based meta-analyses (CBMA) using the activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) approach, leave one study out cross-validation (LOOCV) of CBMA, diagnostics of significant clusters, visualizing results and coordinates tables, and tips on how to build off this repository to conduct novel analyses.
/code contains the run code used to conduct the analyses presented in the main and supplemental text
/data contains spreadsheets for study meta-data, coordinates, and contrast annotations for each of the studies used in our social interaction coordinate-based meta-analyses (CBMA)
/data/coordinate_datasets contains NiMare coordinate datasets for the overarching and sub-CBMAs, and Neurosynth and Brainmap datasets for meta-analytic coactivation modeling (MACM) and functional decoding analyses.
/data/fc contains resting-state functional connectivity maps for each of the 14 sub-peaks of the overarching CBMA as seeds. These data were obtained from neurosynth.org
/data/rois contains regions of interest (ROI) masks for each of the 9 significant clusters from the overarching CBMA, and spherical ROIs with a 6 mm radius centered around each of the 14 sub-peaks
/results/cbma contains results for each of the CBMAs we conducted, including thresholded and unthresholded whole-brain maps ALE and stats maps, coordinates tables, and NiMare results objects
/results/decode contains results for functional decoding of each cluster and spherical ROI using the Brainmap and Neurosynth LDA datasets
/results/loocv contains results for the leave one (study) out cross-validation (LOOCV) analysis
/results/macm contains meta-analytic coactivation modeling (MACM) results for each cluster and spherical ROI using the Neurosynth database
Introduction: Social interactions play a central role in shaping brain function, but neuroscientific research on interactive social behavior has been limited by the restrictions of brain imaging environments. Although a growing body of neuroimaging research situates participants in real-time social interactive contexts, questions remain about the brain systems critical for understanding social interaction. This study addresses three primary questions: 1) Is there a common network of brain regions that underlies diverse forms of social interaction? 2) Are there dissociable brain systems that contribute to different aspects of social interactive behavior? 3) What are the brain networks and cognitive functions associated with the socially interactive brain?
Methods: We implemented a systematic search of the human neuroimaging literature to find studies involving social interaction – participants were socially engaged and interacted with perceived social partners in real-time – that contrasted against non-socially interactive control conditions. We used coordinate-based meta-analysis (CBMA) of 108 studies to elucidate common social interaction brain regions. We further analyzed subsets of studies to probe social engagement with a human (versus non-human) partner, interactive (versus non-interactive) social contexts, and reciprocal initiating (participant elicits a response from a partner) and responding (to partners actions). Finally, we used the Brainmap and Neurosynth databases to conduct meta-analytic coactivation modeling (MACM) and functional decoding to better characterize the neurocognitive systems associated with social interaction.
Results: The overarching CBMA uncovered significant convergence in ten brain areas that cut across different large-scale brain networks. Follow-up analyses suggest that regions of the reward system contribute to perceived social engagement, regions of the ventral attention network are associated with reciprocal interaction, and partially dissociable brain systems relate to initiating and responding behaviors. MACM and functional decoding results suggest that 3-4 overlapping neurocognitive systems underlie social interaction: default mode network (temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, and cerebellum); lateral frontoparietal regions associated with cognitive control processes; and intermediary midcingulo-insular areas that are associated with reward and emotion.
Discussion: The current study used a data-driven investigation of the neuroimaging literature to advance our understanding of the neural and cognitive systems critical for human social interaction. Our findings suggest that the myriad forms of social interaction may be subserved by a common network of brain areas that traverse multiple neurocognitive systems and adds support to emerging theories proposing the centrality of social interaction in human brain function.
Keywords: Social Interaction, Second-Person Neuroscience, fMRI, Meta-Analysis, Human Neuroimaging