School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, Guangdong, China.
Cereb Cortex. 2024 Jan 14;34(1). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad447.
The hippocampus (HC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) jointly encode a map-like representation of a task space to guide behavior. It remains unclear how the OFC and HC interact in encoding this map-like representation, though previous studies indicated that both regions have different functions. We acquired the functional magnetic resonance imaging data under a social navigation task in which participants interacted with characters in a two-dimensional "social space." We calculate the social relationships between the participants and characters and used a drift-diffusion model to capture the inner process of social interaction. Then we used multivoxel pattern analysis to explore the brain-behavior relationship. We found that (i) both the HC and the OFC showed higher activations during the selective trial than the narrative trial; (ii) the neural pattern of the right HC was associated with evidence accumulation during social interaction, and the pattern of the right lateral OFC was associated with the social relationship; (iii) the neural pattern of the HC can decode the participants choices, while the neural pattern of the OFC can decode the task information about trials. The study provided evidence for distinct roles of the HC and the OFC in encoding different information when representing social space.
海马体（HC）和眶额皮层（OFC）共同编码任务空间的类似地图的表示形式，以指导行为。目前尚不清楚 OFC 和 HC 如何在编码这种类似地图的表示形式中相互作用，尽管先前的研究表明这两个区域具有不同的功能。我们在社会导航任务下获取了功能磁共振成像数据，参与者在二维“社会空间”中与角色进行互动。我们计算了参与者和角色之间的社会关系，并使用漂移扩散模型来捕获社会互动的内部过程。然后，我们使用多体素模式分析来探索大脑-行为关系。我们发现：（i）HC 和 OFC 在选择性试验中比叙述性试验表现出更高的激活；（ii）右侧 HC 的神经模式与社会互动过程中的证据积累有关，右侧外侧 OFC 的模式与社会关系有关；（iii）HC 的神经模式可以解码参与者的选择，而 OFC 的神经模式可以解码试验的任务信息。该研究为 HC 和 OFC 在表示社会空间时编码不同信息提供了证据。
