Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka, Japan.
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Jun 15;43(9):2869-2879. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25822. Epub 2022 Mar 9.
The size of an individual active social network is a key parameter of human social behavior and is correlated with subjective well-being. However, it remains unknown how the social network size of active interactions is represented in the brain. Here, we examined whether resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) connectivity is associated with the social network size of active interactions using behavioral data of a large sample (N = 222) on Twitter. Region of interest (ROI)-to-ROI analysis, graph theory analysis, seed-based analysis, and decoding analysis together provided compelling evidence that people who have a large social network size of active interactions, as measured by "reply," show higher fMRI connectivity of the left inferior frontal gyrus with the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction, which represents the core of the theory of mind network. These results demonstrated that people who have a large social network size of active interactions maintain activity of the identified functional connectivity in daily life, possibly providing a mechanism for efficient information transmission between the brain networks related to language and theory-of-mind.
个体活跃社交网络的规模是人类社交行为的一个关键参数，与主观幸福感相关。然而，活跃互动的社交网络规模如何在大脑中得到体现，目前尚不清楚。在这里，我们利用在 Twitter 上对大量样本（N=222）的行为数据，通过考察静息态功能磁共振成像（fMRI）连接是否与活跃互动的社交网络规模有关，来检验这一问题。基于感兴趣区域（ROI）的 ROI 分析、图论分析、种子点分析和解码分析都提供了强有力的证据，表明那些通过“回复”来衡量的具有较大活跃互动社交网络规模的人，其左侧额下回与背内侧前额叶和颞顶联合区的 fMRI 连接性更高，这些区域代表了心理理论网络的核心。这些结果表明，具有较大活跃互动社交网络规模的人在日常生活中保持着所确定的功能连接的活动，这可能为与语言和心理理论相关的大脑网络之间的有效信息传递提供了一种机制。
