Independent Max Planck Research Group for Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany.
International Max Planck Research School for Translational Psychiatry (IMPRS-TP), Munich, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2019 Sep 30;14(9):977-986. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsz071.
Social signals such as eye contact and motor actions are essential elements of social interactions. However, our knowledge about the interplay of gaze signals and the control of actions remains limited. In a group of 30 healthy participants, we investigated the effect of gaze (direct gaze vs averted) on behavioral and neural measures of action control as assessed by a spatial congruency task (spatially congruent vs incongruent button presses in response to gaze shifts). Behavioral results demonstrate that inter-individual differences in condition-specific incongruency costs were associated with autistic traits. While there was no interaction effect of gaze and action control on brain activation, in a context of incongruent responses to direct gaze shifts, a psychophysiological interaction analysis showed increased functional coupling between the right temporoparietal junction, a key region in gaze processing, and the inferior frontal gyri, which have been related to both social cognition and motor inhibition. Conversely, incongruency costs to averted gaze were reflected in increased connectivity with action control areas implicated in top-down attentional processes. Our findings indicate that direct gaze perception inter-individually modulates motor actions and enforces the functional integration of gaze-related social cognition and action control processes, thereby connecting functional elements of social interactions.
社会信号，如眼神接触和动作，是社交互动的重要组成部分。然而，我们对于注视信号的相互作用以及动作控制的了解仍然有限。在一组 30 名健康参与者中，我们通过空间一致性任务（针对注视转移的空间一致和不一致按钮按压）来评估动作控制的行为和神经测量，研究了注视（直接注视与回避）对其的影响。行为结果表明，条件特异性不一致成本的个体间差异与自闭症特征有关。虽然注视和动作控制之间没有相互作用的大脑激活效应，但在直接注视转移的不一致反应的背景下，心理生理交互分析显示，注视处理的关键区域右颞顶联合区与下额叶回之间的功能耦合增加，这些区域与社会认知和运动抑制都有关。相反，回避注视的不一致成本反映了与涉及自上而下注意过程的动作控制区域的连通性增加。我们的发现表明，直接注视感知个体间调节运动动作，并强制与注视相关的社会认知和动作控制过程的功能整合，从而连接社交互动的功能要素。
