Cedars-Sinai investigators have identified the brain cells responsible for navigating everyday social situations, such as understanding which topics are best avoided in a conversation or gauging the emotions or motives of someone we are talking to. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, identified brain circuits that could be targeted to treat social impairments associated with conditions such as autism.

“Recording the activity of individual neurons in the brains of study participants, we found that distinct populations of neurons were dedicated to these tasks, which we call social inferences,” said Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, director of the Center for Neural Science and Medicine and professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology and Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai, and senior author of the study. “The ability to make decisions about these types of social situations is immensely important and frequently impaired by neurological disease, but the mechanisms behind it have been poorly understood.”

Investigators found that the neurons supporting social inferences were different than those supporting inferences based on nonsocial situations, such as noticing that the sidewalk is wet and inferring that it recently rained. They also found that separate neurons are dedicated to processing social information provided by hands versus that from faces and facial expressions.

Additional Cedars-Sinai authors: Julien Dubois, Adam N. Mamelak

Additional authors: Runnan Cao, Ralph Adolphs, Shuo Wang

Funding: This research was supported by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, AFOSR (FA9550-21-1-0088), NSF (BCS-1945230, IIS-2114644), and NIH (K99EY036650 to R. C., R01MH129426 to S.W., P50MH094258 to R.A., U01NS117839 to U.R., and R01M.

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