title: Specificity, reliability and sensitivity of social brain responses during spontaneous mentalizing.
abstract: The debilitating effects of social dysfunction in many psychiatric disorders prompt the need for systems-level biomarkers of social abilities that can be applied in clinical populations and longitudinal studies. A promising neuroimaging approach is the animated shapes paradigm based on so-called Frith-Happé animations (FHAs) which trigger spontaneous mentalizing with minimal cognitive demands. Here, we presented FHAs during functional magnetic resonance imaging to 46 subjects and examined the specificity and sensitivity of the elicited social brain responses. Test-retest reliability was additionally assessed in 28 subjects within a two-week interval. Specific responses to spontaneous mentalizing were observed in key areas of the social brain with high sensitivity and independently from the variant low-level kinematics of the FHAs. Mentalizing-specific responses were well replicable on the group level, suggesting good-to-excellent cross-sectional reliability [intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs): 0.40-0.99; dice overlap at Puncorr<0.001: 0.26-1.0]. Longitudinal reliability on the single-subject level was more heterogeneous (ICCs of 0.40-0.79; dice overlap at Puncorr<0.001: 0.05-0.43). Posterior temporal sulcus activation was most reliable, including a robust differentiation between subjects across sessions (72% of voxels with ICC>0.40). These findings encourage the use of FHAs in neuroimaging research across developmental stages and psychiatric conditions, including the identification of biomarkers and pharmacological interventions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Systems Neuroscience in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany carolin.moessnang@zi-mannheim.de.
authors.forename: Carolin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Moessnang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Systems Neuroscience in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schäfer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Systems Neuroscience in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Edda
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bilek
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, UMR 8554, CNRS-ENS-EHESS, Institut d'Étude de la Cognition, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.|Service Universitaire de Psychiatrie d'adultes, Centre Hospitalier de Versailles, Le Chesnay, France.|Laboratoire HandiRESP EA4047, Université Versailles Saint Quentin En Yvelines, Versailles, France.|Fondation FondaMental, Créteil, France.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Roux
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Systems Neuroscience in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Otto
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baumeister
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hohmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.|Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Luise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Poustka
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.|Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|Center for Integrative Human Physiology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|Neuroscience Center Zurich, ETH and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brandeis
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Banaschewski
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Systems Neuroscience in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meyer-Lindenberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Systems Neuroscience in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Heike
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tost
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012919:Social Behavior; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: animated shapes; biomarker; fMRI; reliability; spontaneous mentalizing