The human social cognitive network contains multiple regions within the amygdala
Data files
Abstract
Reasoning about someone’s thoughts and intentions – i.e., forming a ‘theory of mind’ – is a core aspect of social cognition and relies on association areas of the brain that have expanded disproportionately in the human lineage. We recently showed that these association zones comprise parallel distributed networks that, despite occupying adjacent and interdigitated regions, serve dissociable functions. One network is selectively recruited by social cognitive processes. What circuit properties differentiate these parallel networks? Here, we show that social cognitive association areas are intrinsically and selectively connected to anterior regions of the medial temporal lobe that are implicated in emotional learning and social behaviors, including the amygdala at or near the basolateral complex and medial nucleus. The results suggest that social cognitive functions emerge through coordinated activity between internal circuits of the amygdala and a broader distributed association network, and indicate the medial nucleus may play an important role in social cognition in humans.
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gtht76hwm
Description of the data and file structure
This dataset contains all the functional connectivity and task activity maps, surface parcellations, and ROIs used in our research paper. All anatomical and surface files needed to open these maps are also included.
Files and variables
File: DBNO.zip
Description: Folder containing all relevant data from the Detailed Brain Network Organization (3T) dataset.
DBNO/parcellations: contains MS-HBM network parcellations on the surface for each subject. Each parcellation is k =14.
DBNO/task_activity: Folder containing task activity (Theory of Mind, Episodic Projection) maps on the surface for each subject. All
- DBNO/task_activity/episodic_projection: run-level and z-scored composite episodic projection activity maps
- DBNO_0#_episodicprojection_high-low_zscore.dscalar.nii : data averaged across all runs into composite ToM task activity map
- DBNO0#_episodicprojection_run7_high-low_zscore.dscalar.nii: run level FALBEL task activity from a belief>photo contrast
- Episodic projection maps were made by For each subject, trials were identified with the highest and lowest EP scores (top 20% of usable trials and bottom 20% of usable trials; if multiple trials at the cut-off margins had the same score, we randomly selected which were included. Beta values for trials in the bottom 20% of composite scores were multiplied by -1, and then all trials (top and bottom 20%) were averaged together to create a contrast map between high-Scene Construction and low-EP. The contrast (beta) map was then z-scored to create a z-stat map.
- DBNO/task_activity/ToM: contains run-level and z-scored composite data from two theory of mind tasks: false belief and pain
- DBNO_0#_ToM*.dscalar.nii : data from FALSEBEL and PAIN contrast maps averaged across all runs and tasks into a composite ToM task activity map
- DBNO0#_FALSEBEL*dtseries.nii: run level FALSE BELIEF task activity from a belief>photo contrast
- DBNO0#_PAIN*dtseries.nii: run level PAIN task activity from an emotional pain > physical pain contrast
*DBNO/wbtemplates_fsaverage6: *contains template surfaces in fsaverage6 space
File: NSD.zip
Description: Folder containing all the functional maps, anatomical files, and surface parcellations made using data from the NSD for this study.
NSD/sub0#: contains all volume files in MNI for each subject
- NSD/sub0#/anat: contains T1 and meanBOLD image
- NSD/sub0#/ROI: contains ROI of Medial Amygdala and Whole Amygdala (with subregions)
- NSD/sub0#/fcmap: contains volume seed-based functional connectivity maps for Default Networks A and B and a binarized map of both networks and their overlap
NSD/surface: contains all subjects’ surface parcellations and additional template surfaces
- NSD/surface/parcellation: contains MS-HBM network parcellations on the surface for each subject. Each parcellation is k =14.
- NSD/surface/wbtemplates_fsaverage: contains template surfaces in fsaverage space,
NSD/tsnr: contains all subject’s signal to noise ratio maps in MNI space.
Datatypes
- Volume File Types
- .nii.gz: compressed nifti
- Surface File Types
- lh.border: border file showing outline of network parcellations (left hemisphere only)
- dlabel.nii: parcellation file
- .dscalar.nii: scalar image file
- .dtseries.nii: time series of each voxel
- surf.gii: surface geometry file
Access information
NSD functional connectivity maps and surface parcellations were derived from the following sources: