A new ultrasound technique lets researchers switch off deep-brain circuits in healthy volunteers, testing whether abstract thinking about social relationships is essential for navigating group dynamics. The problem is that scientists know remarkably little about how the brain handles social cognition—tracking where our own opinions sit relative to others’, for instance. A Nobel-winning discovery showed that abstract representations (mental maps of relationships between locations) underpin spatial thinking. This project tests whether the same kind of abstract representations, housed in a deep prefrontal-subcortical circuit, are causally necessary for social cognition. The researcher will first identify these neural representations using fMRI, then use transcranial ultrasound stimulation—a non-invasive technique she pioneered in macaques—to temporarily disrupt the circuit and measure the effect on behaviour and brain activity. This is fundamental science. If successful, it would establish that abstract social representations are not just correlated with but causally required for effective social thinking. That could reshape how neuroscientists understand social cognition and, in the longer term, inform approaches to conditions where social processing is impaired, such as autism or schizophrenia.
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Humans constantly engage in social interactions with other people. Nevertheless, the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition are poorly understood. By contrast, a Nobel prize winning discovery found that abstract representations enable spatial thinking. These representations capture relationships between locations such as where our car is relative to our workplace. Understanding relationships is essential for social life, too, for example, tracking how our own opinions relate to others’ views. My hypothesis is that abstract representations are found in a deep prefrontal-subcortical (DPS) circuit linked to social cognition and that they are causally necessary for social cognition. They are needed to navigate social relationships such as: (A) Distinguishing self and other. (B) Navigating multi-person groups. (C) Assessing multiple features of a person. I draw on formal definitions for specific types of abstract concepts and quantitative methods for their identification. I employ these methods to address fundamental social problems (A-C). This allows me to (1) identify abstract DPS representations underlying social cognition using neuroimaging and (2) use a new non-invasive deep-brain stimulation technique that I pioneered in macaques, transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), to manipulate abstract social representations. I will measure its causal effect on behaviour and neural representations in the DPS circuit using advanced computational analyses. This will not only reveal how the DPS circuit supports abstract social representations but establish that these abstract representations are causally necessary for effective social cognition. Conceptually, DeepSocial introduces a new framework with the potential to reveal mechanisms that unify social and non-social ways of thinking. Methodologically, DeepSocial pioneers a new deep brain stimulation method to determine the causal contribution of deep brain circuits to our ability to navigate the social world.
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