Previous studies have identified a collection of brain areas that show neural selectivity for the distinction between human-to-human and human-to-object interactions, including regions implicated in sensory and social processing. It remains largely unknown, however, how the functional communication between these areas changes with the type of interaction. Combining a generalized psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analysis and independent component analysis (ICA), the current study sought to identify the context-sensitive modulation of the functional network architecture during touch observation. Thirty-seven participants watched 75 video clips displaying social and non-social touch events during a functional imaging scan. A gPPI analysis of pre-defined regions of interest revealed that social-cognitive brain regions show enhanced interregional coupling during social touch observation, both among social-cognitive brain regions and between social-cognitive regions and sensory regions. Conversely, during non-social touch observation, a significantly stronger coupling among brain areas within the system that processes the unimodal sensory information was observed. At the level of large-scale brain networks extracted with ICA, stronger connectivity between 11 pairs of networks, including default mode networks, was observed during social touch observation, while only three pairs of networks showed stronger connectivity during non-social touch observation. The current study identifies the presence of context-dependent changes in functional brain architecture based on whether the touch recipient is a person or an object, highlighting an increased exchange of neural information for social processing.

中文翻译：

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在观察社交和非社交触摸互动过程中，功能连接的任务相关变化。

先前的研究已经确定了大脑区域的集合，这些区域对区分人与人之间以及人与物体之间的交互具有神经选择性，包​​括与感觉和社会加工有关的区域。但是，这些区域之间的功能通信是如何随着交互类型而变化的，在很大程度上仍然未知。结合广义的心理生理交互（gPPI）分析和独立成分分析（ICA），当前的研究试图确定触摸观察过程中功能网络体系结构的上下文相关调制。三十七名参与者观看了75个视频剪辑，这些视频剪辑在功能性成像扫描期间显示了社交和非社交触摸事件。对预先定义的感兴趣区域的gPPI分析显示，社交认知大脑区域之间以及社交认知区域和感官区域之间，社交认知大脑区域在社交触摸观察期间显示出增强的区域间耦合。相反，在非社交触摸观察过程中，观察到处理单峰感觉信息的系统内大脑区域之间的耦合明显增强。在使用ICA提取的大规模脑网络方面，在社交触摸观察期间观察到11对网络（包括默认模式网络）之间的连接性更强，而在非社交触摸观察过程中只有三对网络显示出较强的连接性。