%0 Journal Article %J NeuroImage %D 2019 %T Representational similarity precedes category selectivity in the developing ventral visual pathway %A Cohen, Michael A. %A Dilks, Daniel D. %A Kami Koldewyn %A Weigelt, Sarah %A Jenelle Feather %A Alexander J. E. Kell %A Keil, Boris %A Fischl, Bruce %A Zöllei, Lilla %A Lawrence Wald %A Rebecca Saxe %A Nancy Kanwisher %B NeuroImage %V 197 %P 565 - 574 %8 Jan-08-2019 %G eng %U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31077844 %! NeuroImage %R 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.05.010 %0 Journal Article %J Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences %D 2017 %T Perceiving social interactions in the posterior superior temporal sulcus %A Leyla Isik %A Kami Koldewyn %A David Beeler %A Nancy Kanwisher %X

Primates are highly attuned not just to social characteristics of individual agents, but also to social interactions between multiple agents. Here we report a neural correlate of the representation of social interactions in the human brain. Specifically, we observe a strong univariate response in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) to stimuli depicting social interactions between two agents, compared with (i) pairs of agents not interacting with each other, (ii) physical interactions between inanimate objects, and (iii) individual animate agents pursuing goals and interacting with inanimate objects. We further show that this region contains information about the nature of the social interaction—specifically, whether one agent is helping or hindering the other. This sensitivity to social interactions is strongest in a specific subregion of the pSTS but extends to a lesser extent into nearby regions previously implicated in theory of mind and dynamic face perception. This sensitivity to the presence and nature of social interactions is not easily explainable in terms of low-level visual features, attention, or the animacy, actions, or goals of individual agents. This region may underlie our ability to understand the structure of our social world and navigate within it.

 

 
%B Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences %V 114 %8 10/2017 %G eng %U http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/10/06/1714471114.short %N 43 %! PNAS %( PNAS October 9, 2017. 201714471; published ahead of print October 9, 2017 %R https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1714471114 %0 Journal Article %J Cerebral Cortex %D 2015 %T Functional organization of social perception and cognition in the superior temporal sulcus %A Ben Deen %A Kami Koldewyn %A Nancy Kanwisher %A Rebecca Saxe %X

The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is considered a hub for social perception and cognition, including the perception of faces and human motion, as well as understanding others’ actions, mental states, and language. However, the functional organization of the STS remains debated: Is this broad region composed of multiple functionally distinct modules, each specialized for a different process, or are STS subregions multifunctional, contributing to multiple processes? Is the STS spatially organized, and if so, what are the dominant features of this organization? We address these questions by measuring STS responses to a range of social and linguistic stimuli in the same set of human participants, using fMRI. We find a number of STS subregions that respond selectively to certain types of social input, organized along a posterior-to-anterior axis. We also identify regions of overlapping response to multiple contrasts, including regions responsive to both language and theory of mind, faces and voices, and faces and biological motion. Thus, the human STS contains both relatively domain-specific areas, and regions that respond to multiple types of social information.

%B Cerebral Cortex %V 25 %P 4596-4609 %8 11/2015 %G eng %U http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/11/4596.full %N 11 %R 10.1093/cercor/bhv111