Perceiving social interactions in the posterior superior temporal sulcus.

ABSTRACT: Primates are highly attuned not just to social characteristics of individual agents, but also to social interactions between multiple agents. Here we report a neural correlate of the representation of social interactions in the human brain. Specifically, we observe a strong univariate response in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) to stimuli depicting social interactions between two agents, compared with (i) pairs of agents not interacting with each other, (ii) physical interactions between inanimate objects, and (iii) individual animate agents pursuing goals and interacting with inanimate objects. We further show that this region contains information about the nature of the social interaction-specifically, whether one agent is helping or hindering the other

SUBMITTER: Isik L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5664556 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature