Youth with and without epilepsy differ in 'social brain' connectivity during a social cognitive task, but not at rest

Deficits in social cognition are common in people with epilepsy. This means that individuals with epilepsy may struggle to understand others' intentions in social situations, may find it harder to interpret others' facial expressions or tone of voice in social interactions, or may have trouble forming social connections with others. We know that epilepsy is associated with atypical functioning in regions of the brain that are thought to be involved in social cognition, but most existing research has examined patterns of brain connectivity at rest--that is, when nothing is happening. The current study wanted to investigate whether youth with epilepsy showed different brain connectivity patterns in these 'social brain' areas, when participants were completing a social cognition task. To answer this question, we compared brain connectivity within the "mentalizing network" (involved in theory of mind and other social cognitive functions) and within a network centered around the amygdala (involved in processing salient social information) in youth with and without epilepsy, while they were either completing a facial emotion recognition task or were at rest.

Compared to typically-developing youth, youth with epilepsy showed weaker connectivity between the left posterior superior temporal sulcus and the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain when seeing facial expressions in the emotion recognition task. These regions are thought to work together during social cognitive tasks, so decreased connectivity between these areas may indicate that these network nodes aren't communicating as efficiently or as well as they could be in youth with epilepsy. On the flip side, we found that youth with epilepsy had greater connectivity within the temporal lobe (between the left temporo-parietal junction and the anterior temporal cortex, to be precise) compared to typically-developing adolescents. This pattern was associated with poorer accuracy on the facial emotion recognition task. It is possible that youth with epilepsy are using a different 'strategy' in the task that results in different brain connectivity patterns in the temporal lobe, but we would need to test this possibility explicitly in future studies. In contrast to these findings, youth with and without epilepsy did not differ in their connectivity within either social brain network during resting-state scans (i.e., when they weren't doing a task).

Overall, our findings highlight that there may be important differences in how regions associated with social cognition are connected to one another during social cognitive tasks in youth with and without epilepsy. Although this is only a first step in understanding this phenomenon, our results indicate that looking at neural connectivity patterns during relevant tasks may be important to understanding the association between epilepsy and social cognitive deficits.

Find out more and read the paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393221001330

Ongoing maturation of neural responses to voices—but not faces—in adolescence

With age, we become better able to understand the meaning behind others’ nonverbal cues. In other words, we become more skilled at identifying others’ emotional states or attitudes based on their facial expressions, postures or gestures, or tone of voice. Previous research has found that the ability to recognize emotions in vocal cues (i.e., the way in which someone says something, beyond their verbal content) follows a more protracted developmental trajectory throughout adolescence than the same ability with facial expressions. Are there similar differences in the maturational trajectory of the neural representation of both types of nonverbal cues?

The current study examined age-related changes in a) facial and vocal emotion recognition skills, and b) in neural activation to both types of stimuli in adolescence. A group of 8- to 19-year-old participants were asked to complete both a facial and a vocal emotion recognition task—in which they were asked to identify the intended emotion in other teenagers’ facial expressions and voices—while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that accuracy on the emotion recognition tasks began to plateau around age 14 for faces, but continued to increase linearly throughout adolescence for voices. At a neural level, a variety of subcortical regions, visual-motor association areas, prefrontal regions, and the right superior temporal gyrus responded to both faces and voices. While there were no age-related changes in activation within these areas when responding to faces, prefrontal regions (specifically, the inferior frontal cortex and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) were more engaged when hearing voices in older adolescents. These findings suggest that the maturation of vocal emotion recognition skills and associated neural responses in frontal regions of the brain are continuing to develop throughout adolescence, following a more protracted trajectory than other social cognitive skills like the ability to interpret facial emotions. This may make it harder for teenagers to navigate social situations in which they must rely on vocal cues—for instance, when others are wearing masks.

Read more at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RYNPJDIYJX5UD3C2XMWQ/full?target=10.1080/17470919.2020.1832572

Emotional faces elicit less activation in face-processing regions of the brain in youth with epilepsy

Youth with epilepsy sometimes report having a hard time forming and maintaining relationships with others. This may be due to a variety of factors, but some research has suggested that deficits in “emotion recognition’”—or, the ability to interpret emotion in others’ facial expressions or tone of voice—may make it more challenging for youth with epilepsy to navigate social interactions. Difficulties in emotion recognition tend to be more pronounced in adults with childhood-onset epilepsy, suggesting that recurrent seizures may be disrupting the integrity of brain circuits involved in this social-cognitive skill in youth. However, though previous studies had investigated the neural representation of emotional faces in adults, none had examined the neural correlates of emotional face processing in youth with epilepsy. The current study examined whether emotional faces elicited different neural response in the brains of youth with and without epilepsy—and whether such differences were related to deficits in emotion recognition. Participants completed a facial emotion recognition task, in which they were asked to identify the emotion in other teenagers’ facial expressions, while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that, compared to typically-developing youth, youth with epilepsy were less accurate in the facial emotion recognition task. In addition, youth with epilepsy showed blunted activation in the fusiform gyrus and right posterior superior temporal sulcus—two regions that play an important role in the processing of faces and social information. Reduced activation in these regions was correlated with poorer accuracy in the facial emotion recognition task. Together, our results suggest that reduced engagement of brain regions involved in processing socio-emotional signals may contribute to difficulties in social cognition experienced by youth with epilepsy.

Read more about the study here.

Loneliness in adolescents is associated with the recognition of vocal fear and friendliness

During the teenage years, adolescents typically begin forming complex social networks and spending more time with friends than with their parents. However, not all teenagers experience the same level of social connection at this age. Feelings of loneliness can be hard to manage, and may impact the way in which teenagers interpret social information. Previous research has shown that lonely individuals are highly attuned to social information, including both cues of social threat and signals of affiliation. Relatedly, loneliness has been linked to better recognition of negative emotions conveyed by others’ facial expressions. However, little is known about whether loneliness has similar associations with the interpretation of non-facial information, such as others’ tone of voice. To answer this question, we asked 11- to 18-year-old adolescents to report on their feelings of loneliness and to complete a vocal emotion recognition task, in which they were asked to select the emotion they thought was being conveyed in recordings of emotional voices. Contrary to our expectations, we found that loneliness was linked to poorer recognition of fear (a negative emotion), but better recognition of friendliness (an affiliative expression), in others’ voices. We speculated that differences from previous findings may stem from the differential timecourse over which vocal emotion unfolds: though negative cues may initially grab listeners’ attention, lonely individuals’ tendency to avoid threat may interfere with their accurate interpretation of this type of social cue. This work provides some evidence that youth’s cognitive response to social information is likely relevant to their social experiences, but highlights the importance of extending our assessment of social information processing to non-facial modalities.

More details about this work can be found here: https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2019.1682971

Morningstar, M., Nowland, R., Dirks, M.A., & Qualter, P. (2019). Links between feelings of loneliness and the recognition of vocal socio-emotional expressions in adolescents. Cognition & Emotion. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2019.1682971

Neural responses to teenagers' faces depend on age and relative closeness to peers

In our new paper, we investigated whether the extent of teenagers’ social re-orientation towards peers was associated with their neural response to adolescents’ emotional faces. We asked 8- to 19-year-old youth to report on their closeness to their parents and to their friends, and to identify the emotions in teenage faces while undergoing fMRI. Compared to younger teenagers, older adolescents reported being closer to their peers than to their parents. In addition, responses in the ‘social’ and ‘reward’ related areas of the brain differed depending on teenagers’ age and relative closeness to their peers. Our findings suggest that the formation of close peer relationships during the teenage years may be accompanied by changes in neural response to social information.

See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6544008/
for more details!