Biology subjects

Landsiedel, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Landsiedel, J..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

Auditory dyadic interactions through the 'eye' of the social brain: How visual is the posterior STS interaction region?

Human interactions contain potent social cues that not only meet the eye but also the ear. Although research has identified a region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus as being particularly sensitive to visually presented social interactions (SI-pSTS), its response to auditory interactions has not been tested. Here, we used fMRI to explore brain response to auditory interactions, with a focus on temporal regions known to be important in auditory processing and social interaction perception. In Experiment 1, monolingual participants listened to two-speaker conversations (intact or sentence-scrambled) and one-speaker narrations in both a known and unknown language. Speaker number and conversational coherence were explored in separately localised regions-of-interest (ROI). In Experiment 2, bilingual participants were scanned to explore the role of language comprehension. Combining univariate and multivariate analyses, we found initial evidence for a heteromodal response to social interactions in SI-pSTS. Specifically, right SI-pSTS preferred auditory interactions over control stimuli and represented information about both speaker number and interactive coherence. Bilateral temporal voice areas (TVA) showed a similar, but less specific, profile. Exploratory analyses identified another auditory-interaction sensitive area in anterior STS. Indeed, direct comparison suggests modality specific tuning, with SI-pSTS preferring visual information while aSTS prefers auditory information. Altogether, these results suggest that right SI-pSTS is a heteromodal region that represents information about social interactions in both visual and auditory domains. Future work is needed to clarify the roles of TVA and aSTS in auditory interaction perception and further probe right SI-pSTS interaction-selectivity using non-semantic prosodic cues. Highlights- Novel work investigating social interaction perception in the auditory domain. - Visually defined SI-pSTS shows a heteromodal response profile to interactions. - Yet, it prefers visual to auditory stimuli. The reverse was found for anterior STS. - Temporal voice areas show qualitatively different response compared to SI-pSTS. - Future studies are needed to corroborate the unique role of right SI-pSTS.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

The role of motion in the neural representation of social interactions in the posterior temporal cortex

Humans are an inherently social species, with multiple focal brain regions sensitive to various visual social cues such as faces, bodies, and biological motion. More recently, research has begun to investigate how the brain responds to more complex, naturalistic social scenes, identifying a region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (SI-pSTS; i.e., social interaction pSTS), among others, as an important region for processing social interaction. This research, however, has presented images or videos, and thus the contribution of motion to social interaction perception in these brain regions is not yet understood. In the current study, 22 participants viewed videos, image sequences, scrambled image sequences and static images of either social interactions or non-social independent actions. Combining univariate and multivariate analyses, we confirm that bilateral SI-pSTS plays a central role in dynamic social interaction perception but is much less involved when interactiveness is conveyed solely with static cues. Regions in the social brain, including SI-pSTS and extrastriate body area (EBA), showed sensitivity to both motion and interactive content. While SI-pSTS is somewhat more tuned to video interactions than is EBA, both bilateral SI-pSTS and EBA showed a greater response to social interactions compared to non-interactions and both regions responded more strongly to videos than static images. Indeed, both regions showed higher responses to interactions than independent actions in videos and intact sequences, but not in other conditions. Exploratory multivariate regression analyses suggest that selectivity for simple visual motion does not in itself drive interactive sensitivity in either SI-pSTS or EBA. Rather, selectivity for interactions expressed in point-light animations, and selectivity for static images of bodies, make positive and independent contributions to this effect across the LOTC region. Our results strongly suggest that EBA and SI-pSTS work together during dynamic interaction perception, at least when interactive information is conveyed primarily via body information. As such, our results are also in line with proposals of a third visual stream supporting dynamic social scene perception.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Developmental Changes in Visual Responses to Social Interactions

Recent evidence demonstrates that a region of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is selective to visually observed social interactions in adults. In contrast, we know comparatively little about neural responses to social interactions in children. Here, we used fMRI to ask whether the pSTS would be tuned to social interactions in children at all, and if so, how selectivity might differ from adults. This was investigated not only in the pSTS, but also in socially-tuned regions in neighbouring temporal cortex: extrastriate body area (EBA), face-selective STS (STS-F), fusiform face area (FFA), and temporo-parietal junction (TPJ-M).\n\nBoth children and adults showed selectivity to social interaction within right pSTS, while only adults showed selectivity on the left. Adults also showed both more focal and greater selectivity than children (6-12 years) bilaterally. Exploratory sub-group analyses showed that younger children (6-8 years), but not older children (9-12), are less selective than adults on the right, while there was a developmental trend (adults > older > younger) in left pSTS. These results suggest that, over development, the neural response to social interactions is characterized by increasingly more selective, more focal and more bilateral pSTS responses, a process that likely continues into adolescence.\n\nHighlightsO_LIChildren show less interaction selectivity in the pSTS than adults\nC_LIO_LIAdults show bilateral pSTS selectivity, while children are more right-lateralized\nC_LIO_LIExploratory findings suggest interaction selectivity in pSTS is more focally tuned in adults\nC_LI

neuroscience↗