Neural Mechanisms of Social Interaction Perception: Observing Interpersonal Synchrony Modulates Action Observation Network Activation and Is Spared in Autism

• Published in: Human brain mapping 2024-10, Vol.45 (15), p.e70052-n/a
• Main Authors: Bierlich, Afton M., Scheel, Nanja T., Traiger, Leora S., Keeser, Daniel, Tepest, Ralf, Georgescu, Alexandra L., Koehler, Jana C., Plank, Irene Sophia, Falter‐Wagner, Christine M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Action Observation Network; Adult; Autism; Autistic Disorder - diagnostic imaging; Autistic Disorder - physiopathology; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Behavior; Brain - diagnostic imaging; Brain - physiopathology; Brain Mapping; Communication; Dynamics; Female; fMRI; Frontal gyrus; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Information processing; Interpersonal Relations; interpersonal synchrony perception; Investigations; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medical imaging; Neuroimaging; Observers; Perception; Photic Stimulation - methods; Social behavior; Social Interaction; social interaction perception; Social interactions; Social organization; Social Perception; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1065-9471; 1097-0193; 1097-0193
• DOI: 10.1002/hbm.70052

ABSTRACT How the temporal dynamics of social interactions are perceived arguably plays an important role in how one engages in social interactions and how difficulties in establishing smooth social interactions may occur. One aspect of temporal dynamics in social interactions is the mutual coordination of individuals' behaviors during social interaction, otherwise known as behavioral interpersonal synchrony (IPS). Behavioral IPS has been studied increasingly in various contexts, such as a feature of the social interaction difficulties inherent to autism. To fully understand the temporal dynamics of social interactions, or reductions thereof in autism, the neural basis of IPS perception needs to be established. Thus, the current study's aim was twofold: to establish the basic neuro‐perceptual processing of IPS in social interactions for typical observers and to test whether it might differ for autistic individuals. In a task‐based fMRI paradigm, participants viewed short, silent video vignettes of humans during social interactions featuring a variation of behavioral IPS. The results show that observing behavioral IPS modulates the Action Observation Network (AON). Interestingly, autistic participants showed similar neural activation patterns as non‐autistic participants which were modulated by the behavioral IPS they observed in the videos, suggesting that the perception of temporal dynamics of social interactions is spared and may not underly reduced behavioral IPS often observed in autism. Nevertheless, a general difference in processing social interactions was found in autistic observers, characterized by decreased neural activation in the right middle frontal gyrus, angular gyrus, and superior temporal areas. These findings demonstrate that although the autistic and non‐autistic groups indeed differed in the neural processing of social interaction perception, the temporal dynamics of these social interactions were not the reason for these differences in social interaction perception in autism. Hence, spared recruitment of the AON for processing temporal dynamics of social interactions in autism does not account for the widely reported attenuation of IPS in autism and for the widely reported and presently observed differences in social interaction perception in autism. Using task‐based fMRI, we investigated the neural basis of interpersonal synchrony (IPS) perception. Our findings show that IPS modulates neural activation in the Action Observation Networ