Reduced segregation in social brain networks related to social cognition in autism and schizophrenia

Poster No:

430 

Submission Type:

Abstract Submission 

Authors:

Ju-Chi Yu1, Colin Hawco1,2, Lindsay Oliver1,2, Maria Secara1,3, Iska Moxon-Emre1, Fariah Sandhu4, Zara Khan5, Peter Szatmari1,2,6, Meng-Chuan Lai1,2, Miklos Argyelan7, James Gold8,9, Sunny Tang7, George Foussias1, Robert Buchanan8,9, Anil Malhotra7, Aristotle Voineskos1,2, Stephanie Ameis1,2,6, Erin Dickie1,2

Institutions:

1Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, 2Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 3University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 4Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, 5Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 6Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 7Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health, Glen Oaks, NY, 8Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Catonsville, MD, 9Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Catonsville, MD

First Author:

Ju-Chi Yu, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario

Co-Author(s):

Colin Hawco, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lindsay Oliver, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Maria Secara, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Iska Moxon-Emre, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario
Fariah Sandhu  
Department of Psychology, York University
Toronto, Ontario
Zara Khan  
Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Peter Szatmari, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto|Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Meng-Chuan Lai, MD, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Miklos Argyelan, MD  
Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health
Glen Oaks, NY
James Gold, PhD  
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center|Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Catonsville, MD|Catonsville, MD
Sunny Tang, MD  
Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health
Glen Oaks, NY
George Foussias, MD, PhD, FRCPC  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario
Robert Buchanan, MD  
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center|Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Catonsville, MD|Catonsville, MD
Anil Malhotra, MD  
Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health
Glen Oaks, NY
Aristotle Voineskos, MD, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Stephanie Ameis, MD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto|Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada|Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Erin Dickie, PhD  
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health|Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario|Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Introduction:

Both schizophrenia (SSD) and autism spectrum disorders (autism) are characterized by atypical social cognition, which includes lower-level (e.g., emotion recognition) and higher-level (e.g., theory of mind) social cognitive domains (Oliver, 2019). Lower-level social cognition has been related to connectivity in the limbic system and right frontoparietal regions (i.e., the mirror neuron system [MNS]), and higher-level social cognition has been related to connectivity in the cortical midline structures and lateral temporoparietal regions (i.e., the mentalizing network [MENT]). Here, we examined how the configurations of these two network systems relate to social cognition across a transdiagnostic sample including autism, SSD, and typically developing control (TDC) participants.

Methods:

fMRI-derived functional connectivity metrics collected during empathic accuracy (EA) task from 454 participants (autism: N=86; SSD: N=189; TDC: N=179) were analyzed by covSTATIS (i.e., multi-table multidimensional scaling) followed by a 2-dimensional varimax rotation to extract latent dimensions to characterize brain configurations during EA task (see Figures 1A-1B). We categorized brain regions as MNS or MENT with NeuroSynth topics of "mirror" or "empathy" (for MNS) or "mentalizing" (for MENT); see the two networks in Figure 1C-1D. The factor scores of regions from MNS and MENT were then analyzed by partial least squares correlation (PLSC; Krishnan, 2011) to examine their associations with 11 social cognition measures, including 4 subscales (i.e., angry, fear, happy, sad) from the Penn Emotion Recognition Test (ER40; Kohler, 2000), Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron‐Cohen, 2001), and The Awareness of Social Inference Test – Revised (TASIT; McDonald, 2011), including 6 subscales: TASIT 1, identifying emotions; TASIT 2 minimal social inferences including sincere, simple sarcasm, and paradoxical sarcasm; and TASIT 3 measuring social inferences (lies and sarcasm) with enriched contextual cues. The reliability and stability of the PLSC results were examined with permutation (1000 iterations), bootstrap (1000 iterations), and 10-fold cross-validation.

Results:

The first two covSTATIS dimensions explained 16.84% of the signal, with Dimension 1 identifying a visual-auditory (perceptual) axis and Dimension 2 identifying an MNS-MENT (social) axis. PLSC of these two dimensions and the social cognitive measures revealed one significant and stable dimension (p<.001; explaining 73.43% of covariance) showing general associations between social network configuration and social cognitive performance (see Figures 2A-2B). Across our transdiagnostic sample, better social cognitive performance was related to more segregation along the visual-auditory axis, specifically, more-auditory-related networks (i.e., cognitive networks such as language and default mode) are less distinct from the visual end of the axis (bootstrap test with p<.05; Figure 2C). Interestingly, better social cognitive performance was related to less segregation along the MNS-MENT axis, specifically the regions in the language and the visual canonical networks (bootstrap test with p<.05; Figure 2D).
Supporting Image: OHBM2025_Figure1.jpg
Supporting Image: OHBM2025_Figure2.jpg
 

Conclusions:

We identified a latent brain dimension of social network systems during social task performance that maps onto the MNS and MENT networks using covSTATIS. The configuration of social brain networks captured by these dimensions was related to social cognition transdiagnostically (i.e., across our sample of autism, SSD, and TDC participants). Better social cognition is related to the different segregation effects in networks involved in perceptual and social cognitive processing, implying different engagement of, thus different effects of mental conditions in, the perceptual and the social networks in a social task.

Disorders of the Nervous System:

Neurodevelopmental/ Early Life (eg. ADHD, autism)
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1

Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:

Social Cognition

Modeling and Analysis Methods:

fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling 2
Multivariate Approaches

Keywords:

Autism
Cognition
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Multivariate
Schizophrenia
Statistical Methods

1|2Indicates the priority used for review

Abstract Information

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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.

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Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):

Patients

Was this research conducted in the United States?

Yes

Are you Internal Review Board (IRB) certified? Please note: Failure to have IRB, if applicable will lead to automatic rejection of abstract.

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Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel? NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.

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Please indicate which methods were used in your research:

Functional MRI
Behavior
Neuropsychological testing
Computational modeling

For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?

3.0T

Which processing packages did you use for your study?

AFNI
FSL
Free Surfer
Other, Please list  -   fMRIprep

Provide references using APA citation style.

Oliver, L.D. (2019). Lower- and Higher-Level Social Cognitive Factors Across Individuals With Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders and Healthy Controls: Relationship With Neurocognition and Functional Outcome. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 45(3), 629–638.
Krishnan, A. (2011). Partial Least Squares (PLS) methods for neuroimaging: a tutorial and review. Neuroimage, 56(2), 455–475.
Kohler, C.G. (2000). Emotion recognition deficit in schizophrenia: Association with symptomatology and cognition. Biological Psychiatry, 48(2), 127–136.
Baron‐Cohen, S. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test Revised Version: A Study with Normal Adults, and Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High‐functioning Autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(2), 241–251.
McDonald, S. (2011). The awareness of social inference test (revised). New South Wales, Australia: Australasian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment.

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