Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, OK 74136, USA.
Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Jan 18;16(1-2):84-92. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa143.
Hyperscanning-simultaneous brain scanning of two or more individuals-holds great promise in elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of social cognitive functions. This article focuses on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) hyperscanning and identifies promising targets for studying the neuroscience of social interaction with fMRI hyperscanning. Specifically, we present applications of fMRI hyperscanning in the study of social interaction along with promising analysis approaches for fMRI hyperscanning, with its high spatial and low temporal resolution. We first review fMRI hyperscanning studies in social neuroscience and evaluate the premise of using this costly neuroimaging paradigm. Many second-person social neuroscience studies are possible without fMRI hyperscanning. However, certain fundamental aspects of social cognition in real-life social interactions, including different roles of interactors, shared intention emerging through interaction and history of interaction, can be addressed only with hyperscanning. We argue that these fundamental aspects have not often been investigated in fMRI hyperscanning studies. We then discuss the implication of the signal coupling found in fMRI hyperscanning and consider analysis approaches that make fair use of it. With fMRI hyperscanning, we can explore not only synchronous brain activations but whole-brain asymmetric activation patterns with a lagged association between interacting individuals.
超扫描——同时对两个或两个以上个体的大脑进行扫描——在阐明社会认知功能的神经生物学基础方面具有巨大的潜力。本文重点介绍功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 超扫描，并确定了使用 fMRI 超扫描研究社会互动神经科学的有前途的目标。具体来说，我们介绍了 fMRI 超扫描在社会互动研究中的应用，以及 fMRI 超扫描的有前途的分析方法，尽管其空间分辨率高，时间分辨率低。我们首先回顾了社会神经科学中的 fMRI 超扫描研究，并评估了使用这种昂贵的神经影像学范式的前提。许多没有 fMRI 超扫描的第二人称社会神经科学研究是可能的。然而，现实生活中的社会互动中社会认知的某些基本方面，包括互动者的不同角色、通过互动产生的共同意图以及互动的历史，只能通过超扫描来解决。我们认为，这些基本方面在 fMRI 超扫描研究中并没有经常被研究。然后，我们讨论了在 fMRI 超扫描中发现的信号耦合的含义，并考虑了公平利用它的分析方法。使用 fMRI 超扫描，我们不仅可以探索同步的大脑激活，还可以探索具有滞后关联的个体之间的全脑非对称激活模式。
