Amoruso Lucia, Moguilner Sebastian, Castillo Eduardo M, Kleineschay Tara, Geng Shuang, Ibáñez Agustín, García Adolfo M
Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNC), University of San Andres, Buenos Aires C1011ACC, Argentina.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), San Sebastian 20009, Spain.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2025 Jan 4;20(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsae066.
Human vocabularies include specific words to communicate interpersonal behaviors, a core linguistic function mainly afforded by social verbs (SVs). This skill has been proposed to engage dedicated systems subserving social knowledge. Yet, neurocognitive evidence is scarce, and no study has examined spectro-temporal and spatial signatures of SV access. Here, we combined magnetoencephalography and time-resolved decoding methods to characterize the neural dynamics underpinning SVs, relative to nonsocial verbs (nSVs), via a lexical decision task. Time-frequency analysis revealed stronger beta (20 Hz) power decreases for SVs in right fronto-temporal sensors at early stages. Time-resolved decoding showed that beta oscillations significantly discriminated SVs and nSVs between 180 and 230 ms. Sources of this effect were traced to the right anterior superior temporal gyrus (a key hub underpinning social conceptual knowledge) as well as parietal, pre/motor and prefrontal cortices supporting nonverbal social cognition. Finally, representational similarity analyses showed that the observed fronto-temporal neural patterns were specifically predicted by verbs' socialness, as opposed to other psycholinguistic dimensions such as sensorimotor content, emotional valence, arousal, and concreteness. Overall, verbal conveyance of socialness seems to involve distinct neurolinguistic patterns, partly shared by more general sociocognitive and lexicosemantic processes.
人类词汇包括用于交流人际行为的特定词汇，这是一种主要由社会动词（SVs）提供的核心语言功能。有人提出，这项技能涉及专门用于社会知识的系统。然而，神经认知方面的证据很少，而且没有研究考察过社会动词加工的频谱-时间和空间特征。在这里，我们结合脑磁图和时间分辨解码方法，通过词汇判断任务来描述社会动词相对于非社会动词（nSVs）的神经动力学特征。时频分析显示，在早期阶段，右侧额颞区传感器记录到的社会动词的β波（20赫兹）功率下降更为明显。时间分辨解码显示，在180到230毫秒之间，β振荡能够显著区分社会动词和非社会动词。这种效应的来源可追溯到右侧颞上回前部（支撑社会概念知识的关键枢纽）以及支持非言语社会认知的顶叶、运动前区和前额叶皮层。最后，表征相似性分析表明，观察到的额颞神经模式是由动词的社会性专门预测的，而不是由其他心理语言学维度（如感觉运动内容、情感效价、唤醒度和具体性）预测的。总体而言，社会性的言语表达似乎涉及独特的神经语言模式，这些模式部分地与更一般的社会认知和词汇语义过程共享。
