Evidence for social working memory from a parametric functional MRI study

Meghan L Meyer, Robert P Spunt, Elliot T Berkman, Shelley E Taylor, Matthew D Lieberman, Meghan L Meyer, Robert P Spunt, Elliot T Berkman, Shelley E Taylor, Matthew D Lieberman

Abstract

Keeping track of various amounts of social cognitive information, including people's mental states, traits, and relationships, is fundamental to navigating social interactions. However, to date, no research has examined which brain regions support variable amounts of social information processing ("social load"). We developed a social working memory paradigm to examine the brain networks sensitive to social load. Two networks showed linear increases in activation as a function of increasing social load: the medial frontoparietal regions implicated in social cognition and the lateral frontoparietal system implicated in nonsocial forms of working memory. Of these networks, only load-dependent medial frontoparietal activity was associated with individual differences in social cognitive ability (trait perspective-taking). Although past studies of nonsocial load have uniformly found medial frontoparietal activity decreases with increasing task demands, the current study demonstrates these regions do support increasing mental effort when such effort engages social cognition. Implications for the etiology of clinical disorders that implicate social functioning and potential interventions are discussed.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Social working memory task.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Parametric increases in the mentalizing and canonical working memory regions during the delay period as a function of social load level.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Parametric increases in the mentalizing and canonical working memory regions during the probe response period as a function of social load level.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Regions showing social load dependent increases during the delay period of social working memory trials that correlate with trait-level perspective-taking ability. The lateral view of the brain shows that none of the regions in the frontoparietal canonical working memory network showed parametric activation correlating with perspective-taking scores. The medial view of the brain shows regions in the mentalizing and default-mode network whose parametric activation correlates with perspective-taking scores. This correlation is plotted for MPFC parametric increases by load as a function of perspective-taking scores.

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