Neural similarity between mentalizing and live social interaction during the transition to adolescence.

ABSTRACT: Social interactions are essential for human development, yet little neuroimaging research has examined their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms using socially interactive paradigms during childhood and adolescence. Recent neuroimaging research has revealed activity in the mentalizing network when children engage with a live social partner, even when mentalizing is not required. While this finding suggests that social-interactive contexts may spontaneously engage mentalizing, it is not a direct test of how similarly the brain responds to these two contexts. The current study used representational similarity analysis on data from 8- to 14-year-olds who made mental and nonmental judgments about an abstract character and a live interaction partner during fMRI. A within-subject, 2 (Mental/Non

SUBMITTER: Merchant JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9374881 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature