N.P. Bechtereva Institute of Human Brain, Russian Academy of Science, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
Front Neural Circuits. 2021 Oct 14;15:727960. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2021.727960. eCollection 2021.
The organization of socio-cognitive processes is a multifaceted problem for which many sophisticated concepts have been proposed. One of these concepts is social intelligence (SI), i.e., the set of abilities that allow successful interaction with other people. The theory of mind (ToM) human brain network is a good candidate for the neural substrate underlying SI since it is involved in inferring the mental states of others and ourselves and predicting or explaining others' actions. However, the relationship of ToM to SI remains poorly explored. Our recent research revealed an association between the gray matter volume of the caudate nucleus and the degree of SI as measured by the Guilford-Sullivan test. It led us to question whether this structural peculiarity is reflected in changes to the integration of the caudate with other areas of the brain associated with socio-cognitive processes, including the ToM system. We conducted seed-based functional connectivity (FC) analysis of resting-state fMRI data for 42 subjects with the caudate as a region of interest. We found that the scores of the Guilford-Sullivan test were positively correlated with the FC between seeds in the right caudate head and two clusters located within the right superior temporal gyrus and bilateral precuneus. Both regions are known to be nodes of the ToM network. Thus, the current study demonstrates that the SI level is associated with the degree of functional integration between the ToM network and the caudate nuclei.
社会认知过程的组织是一个多方面的问题，为此已经提出了许多复杂的概念。其中一个概念是社会智力（SI），即成功与他人互动的一系列能力。心智理论（ToM）人类大脑网络是作为 SI 基础的神经基质的一个很好的候选者，因为它涉及推断他人和自己的心理状态，并预测或解释他人的行为。然而，ToM 与 SI 的关系仍未得到充分探索。我们最近的研究揭示了尾状核的灰质体积与通过 Guilford-Sullivan 测试测量的 SI 程度之间的关联。这使我们质疑这种结构特征是否反映在尾状核与包括 ToM 系统在内的与社会认知过程相关的大脑其他区域的整合变化中。我们对 42 名受试者的静息状态 fMRI 数据进行了基于种子的功能连接（FC）分析，以尾状核作为感兴趣的区域。我们发现 Guilford-Sullivan 测试的分数与右侧尾状核头部种子与两个位于右侧颞上回和双侧楔前叶内的簇之间的 FC 呈正相关。这两个区域都是 ToM 网络的节点。因此，本研究表明，SI 水平与 ToM 网络和尾状核之间的功能整合程度相关。
