Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA; Computation and Mathematics for Biological Networks, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA; Department of Cognitive, Linguistics, And Psychological Sciences, Brown University, RI, USA.
Neuroimage. 2020 Aug 1;216:116616. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116616. Epub 2020 Feb 11.
The development of successful social-cognitive abilities requires one to track, accumulate, and integrate knowledge of other people's mental states across time. Regions of the brain differ in their temporal scale (i.e., a cortical temporal hierarchy) and those receptive to long temporal windows may facilitate social-cognitive abilities; however, the cortical development of long timescale processing remains to be investigated. The current study utilized naturalistic viewing to examine cortical development of long timescale processing and its relation to social-cognitive abilities in middle childhood - a time of expanding social spheres and increasing social-cognitive abilities. We found that, compared to adults, children exhibited reduced low-frequency power in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and reduced specialization for long timescale processing within the TPJ and other regions broadly implicated in the default mode network and higher-order visual processing. Further, specialization for long timescales within the right dorsal medial prefrontal cortex became more 'adult-like' as a function of children's comprehension of character mental states. These results suggest that cortical temporal hierarchy in middle childhood is immature and may be important for an accurate representation of complex naturalistic social stimuli during this age.
成功的社会认知能力的发展需要一个人在时间上跟踪、积累和整合对他人心理状态的知识。大脑区域在时间尺度上存在差异（即皮质时间层次结构），那些能够接收长时窗的区域可能有助于社会认知能力；然而，长时尺度处理的皮质发展仍有待研究。本研究利用自然观察来研究儿童中期长时尺度处理的皮质发展及其与社会认知能力的关系——这是社会范围扩大和社会认知能力增强的时期。我们发现，与成年人相比，儿童在颞顶联合区（TPJ）的低频功率降低，并且在 TPJ 内以及其他广泛涉及默认模式网络和高阶视觉处理的区域内，长时尺度处理的专业化程度降低。此外，右背内侧前额叶皮层内长时尺度的专业化程度随着儿童对角色心理状态的理解而变得更加“成人化”。这些结果表明，儿童中期的皮质时间层次结构尚未成熟，对于在这个年龄段准确表示复杂的自然社会刺激可能很重要。
