ArticleBehavioural brain research2018
The structural and functional brain networks that support human social networks.
Article in Behavioural brain research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 132 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Social Cognition Among People Living with HIV: Implications for Non-Social Cognition and Social Everyday Functioning.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Altered neural mechanism of social reward anticipation in individuals with schizophrenia and social anhedonia.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2023Pooled it
- Relating Cognition to both Brain Structure and Function: A Systematic Review of Methods.Brain connectivity · 2023Pooled it
- Socioecological complexity in primate groups and its cognitive correlates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Contextualizing the adolescent social brain: Links to social health using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- The brain network underlying social participation: a multimodal, data-driven investigation.Brain imaging and behavior · 2026Article
- The Cortico-Cortical and Subcortical Circuits of the Human Brain Language Centers Including the Dual Limbic and Language Functioning Fiber Tracts.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Article
- The intrinsic reason why the term "central sensitization" should be refined, by introducing the terms "spinal sensitization", "pain-related brain network sensitization", and "psychosocial-related sensitization".Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Brain network efficiency during social interaction is associated with real-world social network size.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2025Article
- Socio-environmental and health-related factors and their association with longitudinal change in brain neuroimaging markers through the plasma metabolome among UK adults: An additive Bayesian network analysis.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- The (un-)Social Brain in Isolation.Physiological research · 2025Review
- Social cognition abilities in people with HIV: the role of stigma and other factors.AIDS (London, England) · 2025Review
- The relationship between social network size and brain structure in older adults living with HIV.Brain imaging and behavior · 2025Article
- Shared genetics and causal relationship between sociability and the brain's default mode network.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Social network size, empathy, and white matter: A diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Intrinsic functional connectivity brain networks mediate effect of age on sociability.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Callousness, exploitativeness, and tracking of cooperation incentives in the human default network.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Social skills rely on a specific set of cognitive processes, raising the possibility that individual differences in social networks are related to differences in specific brain structural and functional networks. Here, we tested this hypothesis with multimodality neuroimaging. With diffusion MRI (DMRI), we showed that differences in structural integrity of particular white matter (WM) tracts, including cingulum bundle, extreme capsule and arcuate fasciculus were associated with an individual's social network size (SNS). A voxel-based morphology analysis demonstrated correlations between gray matter (GM) volume and SNS in limbic and temporal lobe regions. These structural changes co-occured with functional network differences. As a function of SNS, dorsomedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex showed altered resting-state functional connectivity with the default mode network (DMN). Finally, we integrated these three complementary methods, interrogating the relationship between social GM clusters and specific WM and resting-state networks (RSNs). Probabilistic tractography seeded in these GM nodes utilized the SNS-related WM pathways. Further, the spatial and functional overlap between the social GM clusters and the DMN was significantly closer than other control RSNs. These integrative analyses provide convergent evidence of the role of specific circuits in SNS, likely supporting the adaptive behavior necessary for success in extensive social environments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.