fMRI Meta-Analysis of Social Interaction via Joint Attention Paradigms

Abstract

Joint Attention (JA) is the sharing of attention on a common object or event by two or more people. JA is an important precursor to the development of social cognitive skills needed for more sophisticated forms of social interaction. The brain regions involved in JA during social interactive contexts are not well known because original studies of JA used tasks that are not interactive, such as engaging with the eye gaze of a static image outside of a social interactive context. Recent studies have used fMRI to understand the different brain regions associated with JA in interactive contexts, but there are inconsistent findings across studies. Therefore, this study uses meta-analytic methods to aggregate findings across JA studies using social interactive approaches to identify brain regions that are commonly activated.

Notes

Poster presented at the Undergraduate Research Day, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

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