Computational Neuropsychiatry Lab, Department of Medical Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Commun Biol. 2024 Oct 10;7(1):1293. doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06934-8.
Healthy social life requires relationships in different levels of personal closeness. Based on ethological, sociological, and psychological evidence, social networks have been divided into five layers, gradually increasing in size and decreasing in personal closeness. Is this division also reflected in brain processing of social networks? During functional MRI, 21 participants compared their personal closeness to different individuals. We examined the brain volume showing differential activation for varying layers of closeness and found that a disproportionately large portion of this volume (80%) exhibited preference for individuals closest to participants, while separate brain regions showed preference for all other layers. Moreover, this bipartition reflected cortical preference for different sizes of physical spaces, as well as distinct subsystems of the default mode network. Our results support a division of the neurocognitive processing of social networks into two patterns depending on personal closeness, reflecting the unique role intimately close individuals play in our social lives.
健康的社交生活需要不同层次的人际关系。基于行为学、社会学和心理学的证据，社交网络已经被分为五个层次，其规模逐渐增大，个人亲密程度逐渐降低。这种划分是否也反映在大脑对社交网络的处理中？在功能磁共振成像期间，21 名参与者将自己与不同个体的亲密程度进行了比较。我们研究了大脑体积，以观察不同亲密程度的大脑区域的差异激活情况，发现该体积的不成比例的大部分（80%）表现出对最接近参与者的个体的偏好，而其他所有层则表现出不同的偏好。此外，这种二分法反映了大脑对不同大小的物理空间的偏好，以及默认模式网络的不同子系统。我们的研究结果支持将社交网络的神经认知处理分为两种模式，这取决于个人的亲密程度，反映了亲密个体在我们社交生活中扮演的独特角色。
