人们在日常社交中形成对他人的印象,并从他人的行为中推断出人格特质。这种特质推断被认为依赖于两个普遍的维度:能力和温暖。这两个维度可用于构建“社会认知图”,以有效地组织从社会相遇中获得的大量信息。源于空间认知,支持空间认知图表示和导航的神经编码得到了广泛的研究。最近的研究表明,类似的神经机制也适用于社会认知中的地图状架构。在这里,我们研究了空间代码如何在物理环境之外运行,并支持社会认知地图的表示和导航。我们设计了一个由能力和温暖两个维度定义的社会价值空间。行为上,参与者能够从这个抽象的社交空间中的随机起始位置导航到学习的位置。在神经层面,我们确定了前肌距离的表示,梭状回,和枕骨中回.我们还在内侧前额叶皮层和内嗅皮层中发现了网格状表示模式的部分证据。此外,网格状反应的强度随着在社交空间中导航的表现和社交回避特征得分而缩放。我们的发现表明了一种神经认知机制,通过这种机制,社会信息可以被组织成一个结构化的表示,即认知地图及其与社会福祉的相关性。
People form impressions about others during daily social encounters and infer personality traits from others\' behaviors. Such trait inference is thought to rely on two universal dimensions: competence and warmth. These two dimensions can be used to construct a \'social cognitive map\' organizing massive information obtained from social encounters efficiently. Originating from spatial cognition, the neural codes supporting the representation and navigation of spatial cognitive maps have been widely studied. Recent studies suggest similar neural mechanism subserves the map-like architecture in social cognition as well. Here we investigated how spatial codes operate beyond the physical environment and support the representation and navigation of social cognitive map. We designed a social value space defined by two dimensions of competence and warmth. Behaviorally, participants were able to navigate to a learned location from random starting locations in this abstract social space. At the neural level, we identified the representation of distance in the precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and middle occipital gyrus. We also found partial evidence of grid-like representation patterns in the medial prefrontal cortex and entorhinal cortex. Moreover, the intensity of grid-like response scaled with the performance of navigating in social space and social avoidance trait scores. Our findings suggest a neurocognitive mechanism by which social information can be organized into a structured representation, namely cognitive map and its relevance to social well-being.