image: Along the medial wall, activity pattern similarity in the medial parietal lobe represented information on the social network distance between individuals and their personal affiliation to the participant, while pattern similarity in the medial prefrontal cortex was correlated to similarity between individuals in their perceived personality traits. view more
Credit: Peer et al., JNeurosci 2021
The brain encodes information about our relationships and the relationships between our friends using areas involved in spatial processing, according to new research published in JNeurosci.
Humans maintain hundreds of social relationships, requiring the brain to catalogue countless details about each person and their connections to other people. But it is not known how exactly the brain stores all of this information.
To uncover how the brain encodes social network structure, Peer et al. used Facebook data to map out participants' social connections. Then the researchers measured their brain activity with fMRI as they thought about people from their network. Thinking about a connection generated a unique activity pattern in the retrosplenial complex, a brain region involved in processing spatial information. The "distance" between two people in the social network was reflected by the similarity between the activity patterns. Closer people -- indicated by number of mutual friends -- had similar activity patterns, while more distant people had dissimilar patterns. Information about each connection's personality was encoded in the medial prefrontal cortex; people with similar personalities elicited similar activity patterns. These results indicate the brain separates different aspects of social knowledge into unique representations.
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Paper title: Brain Coding of Social Network Structure
About JNeurosci
JNeurosci, the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.
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JNeurosci