Collaborative Research: Structural and functional architecture shaping neural tuning within the human posterior superior temporal sulcus

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Humans are social creatures with extensive neural systems dedicated to the skills required to navigate interactions with others. This includes decoding the actions of others to infer goals and intentions, and planning our own actions that are appropriate for the current context. Brain regions that support these skills are anatomically dispersed in the four lobes of the brain, organized as a network with communication via long-range white matter connections. One key hub of this network is the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). The work is this proposal will address an important outstanding question: how the long-range connections supporting action understanding are organized, and the nature of the information that is integrated through these connections. This work will combine structural and functional brain imaging to identify anatomical pathways connecting systems supporting action recognition, with particular attention to pathways through the pSTS, and will use computational statistical analyses to characterize the neural information that is carried through those pathways. This problem is of urgent scientific and clinical relevance: Neuroscience increasingly recognizes that brain regions do not function in isolation, but instead reflect the integration of neural signaling from many cortical sources. The work in this proposal seeks to advance brain science by explicitly modeling these sources in a targeted cortical network. The action recognition network holds additional importance to the public, as some neurodevelopmental disorders (such as autism) are linked to atypical development of the pSTS and poor communication within this neural network. Therefore the outcomes from this work may be critical for developing new clinical tools for diagnosis and interventions for these disorders. Implementing the work in this grant will also support the full engagement and promotion of under-represented and first-generation of young scientists training in neuroscientific research. The problem of how information is communicated and structured within the action recognition network is an important one. Many competing scientific models exist as to the functional specialization of the posterior superior temporal sulcus and connected brain regions within the action recognition network. New empirical data and analytical techniques are required to advance these theoretical models. A key to understanding information structure within the pSTS and the larger action recognition network is to evaluate the sources integrated within the neural signals, which reflect both sensory-driven perceptual analysis of social cues and the top-down goal-directed signals modulate influences. The work in this proposal will combine innovative experimental design with advanced multivariate statistical analyses to extract structure from the rich regional brain activation response, and will decompose the contribution of sensory-driven and top-down signals on neural tuning. At the same time, one must consider where top-down goal-directed signals originate and the structural pathways by which they are transmitted. The work in this proposal is innovative in that it will characterize the network architecture, both structurally and functionally, using a combination of tools rarely implemented despite their clear complementarity.