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Neural sensitivity to social interaction predicts success of real-world peer interaction

Thu, April 8, 2:45 to 4:15pm EDT (2:45 to 4:15pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Social interactions are by definition interactive, yet their neural mechanisms are predominantly studied using non-interactive approaches. Novel interactive social neuroscience paradigms have attempted to bridge this gap by examining neural response to interactive components of social exchanges, such as receipt of a reciprocated reply from a peer partner (Warnell et al., 2018); however, it is unclear how brain activation during these interactive paradigms predicts future social behavior and cognition in the real world, such as during a face-to-face peer interaction. Here, we demonstrate that individual differences in neural sensitivity to experiencing a social reward, the receipt of a reciprocated message from a peer, in middle childhood and early adolescence predict individual differences in enjoyment of a face-to-face peer interaction years later.

As part of an initial lab visit (Time 1), typically developing children aged 8-14 participated in a text-based, real-time social interaction during fMRI data collection. In the fMRI task, children sent messages about their interests (e.g., “I paint pictures”) to a perceived peer or a computer partner and received engaged (e.g., “Me too!”) or disengaged (e.g., “I’m away”) responses. Neural sensitivity to peer engaged responses, controlling for response to peer disengaged messages and computer messages, was extracted from an a priori region of interest in the bilateral nucleus accumbens, a key region in the reward processing network. Of the 99 children who initially participated in the social interaction task, 48 children (21 female, mean age = 12.8 years, range= 9.4-16.1 years) returned an average of 2.2 years later (range = 0.6-4.5 years) for a follow-up visit (Time 2) that included a 25-minute face-to-face social interaction with a novel peer. Following the face-to-face interaction, children completed two self-report measures to probe the success of the interaction: a rating of their desire to interact with the same peer partner again, which 43 of the 48 children completed, and a questionnaire measuring social interaction quality, which all children completed (Berry & Hansen, 1996).

Nucleus accumbens sensitivity to peer engaged messages in the Time 1 fMRI task significantly predicted self-reported desire to interact with the same partner again in the Time 2 social interaction task (t(39)=2.92, p<0.01, β*=0.42). Additionally, nucleus accumbens sensitivity to peer engaged messages was a marginally significant predictor of self-reported interaction quality (t(44)=1.91, p<0.10, β*=0.28). These findings held when controlling for age at the Time 2 visit and time between Time 1 visit and Time 2 visit, neither of which were significant predictors of either measure of interaction success.

Together, these results indicate that nucleus accumbens sensitivity to receipt of social-interactive reward in middle childhood and early adolescence predicts enjoyment of a future face-to-face interaction with a real, novel peer. Through use of a socio-interactive approach to neuroscience, we provide evidence for a novel role of nucleus accumbens engagement in predicting real-world social interaction success. These findings underscore the importance of ecologically valid neuroscience paradigms in elucidating the neural predictors of social interaction outcomes, as these neuroscience paradigms directly capture neural response to the interactive components of a social exchange.

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