The brain encodes information about our relationships and the relationships between our friends using areas involved in spatial processing, according to new research published in JNeurosci.
Humans maintain hundreds of social relationships, requiring the brain to catalogue countless details about each person and their connections to other people. But it is not known how exactly the brain stores all of this information.
To uncover how the brain encodes social network structure, the authors used Facebook data to map out participants' social connections. Then the researchers measured their brain activity with fMRI as they thought about people from their network.
Thinking about a connection generated a unique activity pattern in the retrosplenial complex, a brain region involved in processing spatial information. The "distance" between two people in the social network was reflected by the similarity between the activity patterns.
Closer people -- indicated by number of mutual friends -- had similar activity patterns, while more distant people had dissimilar patterns. Information about each connection's personality was encoded in the medial prefrontal cortex; people with similar personalities elicited similar activity patterns. These results indicate the brain separates different aspects of social knowledge into unique representations.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2021/04/18/JNEUROSCI.2641-20.2021
How the brain encodes social network structure
- 1,081 views
- Added
Edited
Latest News
Hyperactive platelets from…
By newseditor
Posted 19 May
Chromatin and RNA interacti…
By newseditor
Posted 18 May
Why patients with ARID1A mu…
By newseditor
Posted 18 May
Smuggling small molecule mo…
By newseditor
Posted 18 May
Men with gene mutations are…
By newseditor
Posted 17 May
Other Top Stories
Truncated titin proteins in human cardiomyopathy
Read more
Ceramides in cardiometabolic diseases
Read more
Dietary preferences may explain the gut microbiota differences in a…
Read more
Different mechanisms of huntingtin aggregation
Read more
How memories move during sleep?
Read more
Protocols
Breast cancer-on-chip for p…
By newseditor
Posted 16 May
Methods for making and obse…
By newseditor
Posted 15 May
Mime-seq 2.0: a method to s…
By newseditor
Posted 13 May
Improved detection of DNA r…
By newseditor
Posted 09 May
Single-cell adhesive profil…
By newseditor
Posted 07 May
Publications
A microglial activation cas…
By newseditor
Posted 19 May
An age-progressive platelet…
By newseditor
Posted 19 May
Immunotherapy for colorecta…
By newseditor
Posted 18 May
Single-cell multiplex chrom…
By newseditor
Posted 18 May
Autophagy preferentially de…
By newseditor
Posted 18 May
Presentations
Hydrogels in Drug Delivery
By newseditor
Posted 12 Apr
Lipids
By newseditor
Posted 31 Dec
Cell biology of carbohydrat…
By newseditor
Posted 29 Nov
RNA interference (RNAi)
By newseditor
Posted 23 Oct
RNA structure and functions
By newseditor
Posted 19 Oct
Posters
A chemical biology/modular…
By newseditor
Posted 22 Aug
Single-molecule covalent ma…
By newseditor
Posted 04 Jul
ASCO-2020-HEALTH SERVICES R…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
ASCO-2020-HEAD AND NECK CANCER
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
ASCO-2020-GENITOURINARY CAN…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar