Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Observing Virtual Social Interactions

Summary

This article demonstrates an experimental design in which whole-body animated characters are used in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of observing virtual social interactions.

Abstract

The ability to gauge social interactions is crucial in the assessment of others’ intentions. Factors such as facial expressions and body language affect our decisions in personal and professional life alike ¹. These "friend or foe" judgements are often based on first impressions, which in turn may affect our decisions to "approach or avoid". Previous studies investigating the neural correlates of social cognition tended to use static facial stimuli ². Here, we illustrate an experimental design in which whole-body animated characters were used in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings. Fifteen participants were presented with short movie-clips of guest-host interactions in a business setting, while fMRI data were recorded; at the end of each movie, participants also provided ratings of the host behaviour. This design mimics more closely real-life situations, and hence may contribute to better understanding of the neural mechanisms of social interactions in healthy behaviour, and to gaining insight into possible causes of deficits in social behaviour in such clinical conditions as social anxiety and autism ³.

Protocol

1. Stimuli, Task Design, and Experimental Protocol

Our stimuli are created using Poser 7.0 (http://poser.smithmicro.com/poser.html), and they are presented using CIGAL (http://www.nitrc.org/projects/cigal/).

1. The task consists of a series of ten-second animated videos of non-verbal guest-host interactions in a business setting. The subject views the guest being greeted by a host (social interaction condition) or a cardboard cut-out of a host (no social interaction/control condition).
2. The host may display behaviours that....

Discussion

The experimental design introduced here allows investigation of the neural correlates of observing and interpreting body language. This design has the potential to advance our knowledge concerning brain mechanisms involved in social interactions, and to extend theoretical models of how we combine perception of different types of body language or social concepts such as trustworthiness to make decisions in interactive social environments ³. Such knowledge can be applied in a variety of personal and business set.......