Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy.
Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2023 Nov;44(16):5402-5415. doi: 10.1002/hbm.26444. Epub 2023 Aug 23.
Deaf individuals may report difficulties in social interactions. However, whether these difficulties depend on deafness affecting social brain circuits is controversial. Here, we report the first meta-analysis comparing brain activations of hearing and (prelingually) deaf individuals during social perception. Our findings showed that deafness does not impact on the functional mechanisms supporting social perception. Indeed, both deaf and hearing control participants recruited regions of the action observation network during performance of different social tasks employing visual stimuli, and including biological motion perception, face identification, action observation, viewing, identification and memory for signs and lip reading. Moreover, we found increased recruitment of the superior-middle temporal cortex in deaf individuals compared with hearing participants, suggesting a preserved and augmented function during social communication based on signs and lip movements. Overall, our meta-analysis suggests that social difficulties experienced by deaf individuals are unlikely to be associated with brain alterations but may rather depend on non-supportive environments.
聋人可能会报告在社交互动中存在困难。然而，这些困难是否取决于耳聋影响社交大脑回路，这是有争议的。在这里，我们报告了第一个比较听力正常和（语前）聋人在社会感知过程中大脑激活的荟萃分析。我们的研究结果表明，耳聋并不会影响支持社会感知的功能机制。事实上，聋人和听力对照组参与者在执行不同的社会任务时都招募了动作观察网络的区域，这些任务采用视觉刺激，包括生物运动知觉、面孔识别、动作观察、观看、识别和记忆手语和唇读。此外，我们发现聋人组比听力组参与者招募了更多的中上颞叶皮层，这表明基于手语和唇动的社交交流中存在功能保留和增强。总的来说，我们的荟萃分析表明，聋人所经历的社交困难不太可能与大脑改变有关，而可能取决于非支持性的环境。
