Towards the neural basis of joint attention

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hans-Peter Thier
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2013 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 231563695

• Final Report Year: 2021

Final Report Abstract

The project „Towards the neural basis of joint attention” aimed at unravelling the neural mechanisms underlying our ability to establish joint (or “shared”) attention, a term that captures our ability to use the other’s gaze direction to identify her/his object of attention and to use this information to shift one’s own focus of attention to the same object. By mapping one’s object associated aspirations and intentions onto the other, we develop an idea of the other’s mental state, in other words, we can develop a “theory of (the other’s) mind” (TOM), a capacity that emerges in the first few years of life and is severely compromised in autism. Monkeys are also able to follow the other’s gaze to objects of joined attention, most probably tapping homologous brain structures. We took advantage of this correspondence in order to shed light on the neuronal operations underpinning our ability to follow gaze and to establish joint attention. Resorting to recordings from single neurons in the temporal cortex of monkeys engaged in gaze following/joint attention we could delineate a distinct cortical region, dubbed the “gaze following patch” (GFP), located in the posterior superior temporal sulcus, close to, yet not overlapping with the neighbouring “face patch system”. Neurons in the GFP link information on the other’s gaze with distinct spatial locations at which the object of interest is found. Reversibly deactivating this region with microstimulation or muscimol injections compromises gaze following, establishing a causal role of the GFP in this key social function. Moreover, the reversible deactivation experiments also suggest that this region is the site of the cognitive control of joint attention, i.e. our ability to ignore the other’s gaze if required. In parallel non-invasive neuroimaging experiments on humans we could obtain further support for the notion that the cortical underpinnings of human gaze following are very similar to the ones found in monkeys, strengthening hopes that future work on the monkey GFP and its network partners may help us to better understand the pathophysiology of autism.

Publications

• (2017) Following eye gaze activates a patch in the posterior temporal cortex that is not part of the human "face patch" system. eNeuro 4(2)
  Marquardt, Kira; Ramezanpour, Hamidreza; Dicke, Peter W. & Thier, Peter
  
• (2019) Electrical microstimulation establishes a causal role of the superior temporal gaze-following patch (GFP) in controlling gaze-following and its context dependent modulation. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2019. Program No. 489.06, Chicago
  Chong I, Ramezanpour H, Thier P
  
• (2020) A naturalistic dynamic monkey head avatar elicits species-typical reactions and overcomes the uncanny valley. eNeuro 7(4)
  Siebert, Ramona; Taubert, Nick; Spadacenta, Silvia; Dicke, Peter W.; Giese, Martin A. & Thier, Peter
  
• (2020) Decoding of the other's focus of attention by a temporal cortex module. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 117:2663-2670
  Ramezanpour, Hamidreza & Thier, Peter
  
• (2020) Does the brain encode the gaze of others as beams emitted by their eyes? Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 117:20375-20376
  Görner, Marius; Ramezanpour, Hamidreza; Chong, Ian & Thier, Peter
  
• (2020) Frontal, parietal, and temporal brain areas are differentially activated when disambiguating potential objects of joint attention. eNeuro 7(5)
  Kraemer, P.M.; Görner, M.; Ramezanpour, H.; Dicke, P.W. & Thier, P.