Neurobehavioral Clinical Research Section, Social and Behavioral Research Branch, NHGRI/NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus MC, Sophia Children's Hospital Kamer, Rotterdam, 3000 CB, The Netherlands.
Cereb Cortex. 2022 Jul 12;32(14):3031-3041. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhab398.
Homophily refers to the tendency to like similar others. Here, we ask if homophily extends to brain structure. Specifically: do children who like one another have more similar brain structures? We hypothesized that neuroanatomic similarity tied to friendship is most likely to pertain to brain regions that support social cognition. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed friendship network data from 1186 children in 49 classrooms. Within each classroom, we identified "friendship distance"-mutual friends, friends-of-friends, and more distantly connected or unconnected children. In total, 125 children (mean age = 7.57 years, 65 females) also had good quality neuroanatomic magnetic resonance imaging scans from which we extracted properties of the "social brain." We found that similarity of the social brain varied by friendship distance: mutual friends showed greater similarity in social brain networks compared with friends-of-friends (β = 0.65, t = 2.03, P = 0.045) and even more remotely connected peers (β = 0.77, t = 2.83, P = 0.006); friends-of-friends did not differ from more distantly connected peers (β = -0.13, t = -0.53, P = 0.6). We report that mutual friends have similar "social brain" networks, adding a neuroanatomic dimension to the adage that "birds of a feather flock together."
同质性是指喜欢相似他人的倾向。在这里，我们询问同质性是否延伸到大脑结构。具体来说：喜欢彼此的孩子是否具有更相似的大脑结构？我们假设与友谊相关的神经解剖相似性最有可能涉及支持社会认知的大脑区域。为了检验这一假设，我们分析了来自 49 个教室的 1186 名儿童的友谊网络数据。在每个教室中，我们确定了“友谊距离”-相互的朋友，朋友的朋友，以及更远的连接或不连接的孩子。共有 125 名儿童（平均年龄为 7.57 岁，女性 65 名）也有高质量的神经解剖磁共振成像扫描，从中我们提取了“社交大脑”的特性。我们发现，社交大脑的相似性因友谊距离而异：相互的朋友在社交大脑网络中比朋友的朋友表现出更大的相似性（β=0.65，t=2.03，P=0.045），甚至与更远的连接的同龄人更为相似（β=0.77，t=2.83，P=0.006）；朋友的朋友与更远的连接的同龄人没有差异（β=-0.13，t=-0.53，P=0.6）。我们报告说，相互的朋友具有相似的“社交大脑”网络，为“物以类聚”这句谚语增添了神经解剖学的维度。
