| Sociality is indissociable from human life and experience. Humans are constantly engaged in social interaction, whether it be in actuality or imagined, and are particularly sensitive to social stimuli. This high degree of social interaction and sensitivity is a byproduct of human biology and culture and contributes to healthy growth, maturation, and the majority of the joy experienced throughout one's life. Unfortunately, it also accounts for much of an individual's pain and suffering. Due to the importance and pervasiveness of sociality to human life, it is certainly worthy of research. Although behavioral studies comprise the majority of the studies on sociality to date, only recently has research been devoted to the underlying neural substrates supporting social phenomena. Even more scarce are studies investigating these substrates in children and adolescents. In the current research, substrates underlying sociality were investigated in children and adolescents using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In particular, three components of sociality were investigated: Agency, Moral Judgments, and Social Emotions. Agency involves the way we come to understand ourselves as causes of actions and consequences and is the precursor to more complex human social constructs. A moral judgment is defined as the capacity to make decisions and judgments based on internal principles and to act in accordance with such judgements. Social emotions, or more precisely moral emotions, are defined as differing from basic emotions, or more precisely moral emotions, are defined as differing from basic emotions in that they are intrinsically linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or of persons other than the agent. Based on behavioral, imaging, electrophysiology, and lesion studies, these components and their underlying neural circuitry play vital roles in social information processing and behavior and when abnormal, result in severe social deficits. Written vignettes endowed with social moral and/or social moral emotional content were utilized in the current research to investigate these typically developing neural networks in children and adolescents. In the Agency and Moral Judgment task, the participants were required to respond to these vignettes as to whether the social interaction was morally "right" or "wrong." Participants were required to only passively read the vignettes in the Social Emotion task. A shared network was identified between the Agency, Moral Judgment, and Social Emotions conditions including medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), medial parietal, and lateral temporal regions. Although similarities were marked, clearly identifiable differences were noted between social constructs. Select frontal and limbic/subcortical neural activations were observed to be influenced by age. Meanwhile, the shared network between constructs remained steadily recruited across the developmental sample. In conclusion, the results revealed the complex interplay of cognitive and affective processing, both statically and developmentally, subserving the core components of social moral behavior. These findings will be most helpful in the early detection, intervention, and prevention of social disorders, such as autism, adolescent-onset schizophrenia, sociopathy, and others. |
