We regularly infer other people’s thoughts and feelings from observing their
actions, but how this ability contributes to successful social behavior and
interactions remains unknown. We show that neural activation patterns during
social inferences obtained in the laboratory predict the number of social
contacts in the real world, as measured by the social network index, in three
neurotypical samples (total n = 126) and one sample of autistic adults (n=23).
Activation within this same brain region also predicts autism-like trait scores
from questionnaires in our community samples and autism symptom severity in our autistic adults. Thus, neural activation produced while thinking about other people’s mental states predict variance in multiple indices of social functioning in the real world.
The full research article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40078-3
QUEEN'S NEUROECONOMICS LABORATORY 