title: Left inferior parietal lobe engagement in social cognition and language.
abstract: Social cognition and language are two core features of the human species. Despite distributed recruitment of brain regions in each mental capacity, the left parietal lobe (LPL) represents a zone of topographical convergence. The present study quantitatively summarizes hundreds of neuroimaging studies on social cognition and language. Using connectivity-based parcellation on a meta-analytically defined volume of interest (VOI), regional coactivation patterns within this VOI allowed identifying distinct subregions. Across parcellation solutions, two clusters emerged consistently in rostro-ventral and caudo-ventral aspects of the parietal VOI. Both clusters were functionally significantly associated with social-cognitive and language processing. In particular, the rostro-ventral cluster was associated with lower-level processing facets, while the caudo-ventral cluster was associated with higher-level processing facets in both mental capacities. Contrarily, in the (less stable) dorsal parietal VOI, all clusters reflected computation of general-purpose processes, such as working memory and matching tasks, that are frequently co-recruited by social or language processes. Our results hence favour a rostro-caudal distinction of lower- versus higher-level processes underlying social cognition and language in the left inferior parietal lobe.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Germany; JARA, Translational Brain Medicine, Aachen, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany; Parietal team, INRIA, Neurospin, bat 145, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Electronic address: danilobzdok@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Danilo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bzdok
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Gesa
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hartwigsen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Reid
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Florida International University, USA.
authors.forename: Angela R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Laird
authors.affiliation: Research Imaging Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Peter T
authors.initials: PT
authors.lastname: Fox
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
authors.forename: Simon B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Eickhoff
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D009434:Neural Pathways; D010296:Parietal Lobe
keywords: Connectivity-based parcellation; Functional connectivity; Functional decoding; Speech; Statistical learning; Theory of mind