Ju-Chi Yu, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and individuals with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder (SSD) both experience difficulties in social cognition (such as understanding social context and emotion), which influence their every-day functioning.
Social cognition consists of lower-level and higher-level components.
We called the lower-level cognition the “simulation” component, which includes emotional recognition.
For the higher-level social cognition, we called it the “mentalizing” component, which involves more complex processing of emotion, such as theory of mind and understanding the intent or attitudes of others (for example, when others are lying or being sarcastic).
These two components of social cognition are related to different neural circuits.
Simulation network involves connectivity in the mirror neuron system, including limbic system and right frontoparietal regions.
Mentalizing network involves connectivity between the cortical midline structures and lateral temporoparietal regions.
Despite the clinical relevance of atypical social cognition in autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, these deficits are rarely targeted for treatment, and their neurological basis is not well understood.
In this study, we aim to identify transdiagnostic network features specifically related to social cognition, hoping to potentially inform future interventions targeting atypical social cognitive behaviors.
To do so, we examine the functional connectivity from the empathic accuracy task, which involves both levels of social cognition.
However, the observed functional connectivity can be affected by many factors, because these brain regions can be responsible for multiple functions aside from social cognition.
Therefore, we performed advanced multivariate analysis and extracted the social component of functional network connectivity.
Specifically, this component is a gradient of networks that differentiate simulation and mentalizing networks.
Then, we examined how network configuration along this component associates with social cognitive behaviors, and how such association relates to clinical symptoms and functioning.
If you would like to learn more about this study, please stop by my poster M116 on Monday at noon!
