Orbital prefrontal cortex volume predicts social network size: An imaging study of individual differences in humans

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volumn 279, Issue 1736, 2012, Pages 2157-2162

  Powell, Joanne ^a   Lewis, Penelope A ^c   Roberts, Neil ^a,b   García Fiñana, Marta ^a   Dunbar, R I M ^d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^d UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

MRI; Prefrontal cortex; Social network; Stereology

Indexed keywords

BRAIN; COGNITION; HYPOTHESIS TESTING; PRIMATE; SOCIAL NETWORK; VOLUME;

EID: 84860000101     PISSN: 09628452     EISSN: 14712954     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.2574     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. Jerison, H. J. 1973 Evolution of the brain and intelligence. New York, NY: Academic Press.
2. Dunbar, R. I. M. & Shultz, S. 2007 Evolution in the social brain. Science 31, 1344-347. (doi:10.1126/ science.1145463)
3. Barton, R. A. 1996 Neocortex size and behavioural ecology in primates. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 263, 173-177. (doi:10.1098/rspb.1996.0028)
4. Dunbar, R. I. M. 1998 The social brain hypothesis. Evol. Anthrop. 6, 178-190. (doi:10.1002/(SICI)1520-6505 (1998)6:5,178::AID-EVAN5.3.0.CO;2-8)
5. Byrne, R. W. & Whiten, A. (eds) 1988 Machiavellian intelligence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
6. Shultz, S. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 2007 The evolution of the social brain: anthropoid primates contrast with other vertebrates. Proc. R. Soc. B 274, 2429-2436. (doi:10. 1098/rspb.2007.0693)
7. Dunbar, R. I. M. & Shultz, S. 2010 Bondedness and sociality. Behaviour 14, 775-803. (doi:10.1163/ 000579510X501151)
8. Shultz, S. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 2010 Encephalisation is not a universal macroevolutionary phenomenon in mammals but is associated with sociality. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 21 582-21 586. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1005246107)
9. Finlay, B. L. & Darlington, R. B. 1995 Linked regularities in the development and evolution of mammalian brains. Science 268, 1578-1584. (doi:10.1126/science.7777856)
10. Joffe, T. H. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 1997 Visual and socio-cognitive information processing in primate brain evolution. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 264, 1303-1307. (doi:10.1098/rspb.1997.0180)
11. Dunbar, R. I. M. 2011 Evolutionary basis of the social brain. In Oxford handbook of social neuroscience (eds J. Decety & J. Cacioppo) pp. 28-38. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
12. Dunbar, R. I. M. 1992 Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. J. Hum. Evol. 20, 469-493. (doi:10.1016/0047-2484(92)90081-J)
13. Barton, R. A. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 1997 Evolution of the social brain. In Machiavellian intelligence II (eds A. Whiten & R. W. Byrne), pp. 240-263. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
14. Lindenfors, P. 2005 Neocortex evolution in primates: the 'social' brain' is for females. Biol. Lett. 1, 407-410. (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2005.0362)
15. Hill, R. A. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 2003 Social network size in humans. Hum. Nat. 14, 53-72. (doi:10.1007/ s12110-003-1016-y)
16. Roberts, S. B. G., Dunbar, R. I. M., Pollet, T. & Kuppens, T. 2009 Exploring variations in active network size: constraints and ego characteristics. Social Networks 31, 138-146. (doi:10.1016/j.socnet. 2008.12.002)
17. Wimmer, H. & Perner, J. 1983 Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition 13, 103-128. (doi:10.1016/0010-0277 (83)90004-5)
18. Leslie, A. M. 1987 Pretense and representation in infancy: the origins of theory of mind. Psych. Rev. 94, 84-106. (doi:10.1037/0033-295X.94.1.84)
19. Leslie, A. M. 1994 Pretending and believing: issues in the theory of ToMM. Cognition 50, 211-238. (doi:10.1016/ 0010-0277(94)90029-9)
20. Kinderman, P., Dunbar, R. I. M. & Bentall, R. P. 1998 Theory-of-mind deficits and causal attributions. Br. J. Psychol. 89, 191-204. (doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295. 1998.tb02680.x)
21. Stiller, J. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 2007 Perspective-taking and memory capacity predict social network size. Social Networks 29, 93-104. (doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2006.04.001)
22. Bickart, K. C., Wright, C. I., Dautoff, R. J., Dickerson, B. C. & Barrett, L. F. 2011 Amygdala volume and social network size in humans. Nat. Neurosci. 14, 163-164. (doi:10.1038/nn.2724)
23. Kanai, R., Bahrami, B., Roylance, R. & Rees, G. 2011 Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure. Proc. R. Soc. B 279, 1327-1334. (doi:10.1098/ rspb.2011.1959)
24. Lewis, P., Rezaie, R., Browne, R., Roberts, N. & Dunbar, R. I. M. 2011 Ventromedial prefrontal volume predicts understanding of others and social network size. Neuro-Image 57, 1624-1629. (doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011. 05.030)
25. Powell, J., Lewis, P. A., Dunbar, R. I. M., García-Fiñana, M. & Roberts, N. 2010 Orbital prefrontal cortex volume correlates with social cognitive competence. Neuropsycho-logia 48, 3554-3562. (doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia. 2010.08.004)
26. De Bruin, J. P. C. 1990 Social behaviour and the prefrontal cortex. In Progress in brain research (ed. H. B. M. Uylings), pp. 485-497. New York, NY: Elsevier.
27. Deeley, Q. et al. 2008 Changes in male brain responses to emotional faces from adolescence to middle age. Neuro-Image 40, 389-397. (doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007. 11.023)
28. Damasio, A. R. 2012 The frontal lobes. In Clinical neu-ropsychology (eds K. Heilman & E. Valenstein) pp. 417- 465. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
29. Goldman-Rakic, P. S. 1996 The prefrontal landscape: implications of functional architecture for understanding human mentation and the central executive. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 351, 1445-1453. (doi:10.1098/ rstb.1996.0129)
30. Deacon, T. W. 1997 The symbolic species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. New York, NY: Norton.
31. Gabrieli, J. D., Poldrack, R. A. & Desmond, J. E. 1998 The role of left prefrontal cortex in language and memory. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 95, 906-913. (doi:10.1073/pnas.95.3.906)
32. Thompson-Schill, S. L., Swick, D., Farah, M. J., D'Esposito, M., Kan, I. P. & Knight, R. T. 1998 Verb generation in patients with focal frontal lesions: a neuro-psychological test of neuroimaging findings. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 95, 15855-15860. (doi:10.1073/pnas. 95.26.15855)
33. Vendrell, P., Junique, C., Pujol, J., Jurado, M. A., Molet, J. & Grafman, J. 1995 The role of prefrontal regions in the Stroop task. Neuropsychologia 33, 341-352. (doi:10. 1016/0028-3932(94)00116-7)
34. Gallagher, H. L., Happe ́, F., Brunswick, N., Fletcher, P. C., Frith, U. & Frith, C. D. 2000 Reading the mind in cartoons and stories: an fMRI study of 'theory of mind' in verbal and nonverbal tasks. Neuropsychologia 38, 11-21. (doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(99)00053-6)
35. Saxe, R. 2006 Why and how to study theory of mind with fMRI. Brain Res. 1079, 57-65. (doi:10.1016/j.brainres. 2006.01.001)
36. Saxe, R., Carey, S. & Kanwisher, N. 2004 Understanding other minds: linking developmental psychology and functional neuroimaging. Ann. Rev. Psychol. 55, 87-124. (doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142044)
37. Decety, J. & Lamm, C. 2007 The role of the right tem-poroparietal junction in social interaction: how low-level computational processes contribute to meta-cognition. Neuroscientist 13, 580-593. (doi:10.1177/107385840 7304654)
38. Spreng, R. N., Mar, R. A. & Kim, A. S. 2009 The common neural basis of autobiographical memory, pro-spection, navigation, theory of mind, and the default mode: a quantitative meta-analysis. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 21, 489-510. (doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.21029)
39. Howard, M. A., Roberts, N., García-Fiñana, M. & Cowell, P. E. 2003 Volume estimation of prefrontal cortical subfields using MRI and stereology. Brain Res. Protoc. 10, 125-138. (doi:10.1016/S1385-299X(02)00202-7)
40. Cowell, P. E., Sluming, V. A., Wilkinson, I. D., Cezayirli, E., Romanowski, C. A. J., Webb, J. A., Keller, S. S., Mayes, A. & Roberts, N. 2007 Effects of sex and age on regional prefrontal brain volume in two human cohorts. Eur. J. Neurosci. 25, 307-318. (doi:10.1111/j. 1460-9568.2006.05281.x)
41. Dunbar, R. I. M. & Spoors, M. 1995 Social networks, support cliques and kinship. Hum. Nat. 6, 273-290. (doi:10.1007/BF02734142)
42. Keller, S. S., Highley, J. R., García-Fiñana, M., Sluming, V., Rezaie, R. & Roberts, N. 2007 Sulcal variability, stereological measurement and asymmetry of Broca's area on MR images. J. Anat. 211, 534-555.
43. Puddephat, M. J., Spark, V., Roberts, N. & Whitehouse, G. H. 1997 Unbiased and efficient estimation of the pial surface area and mean thickness of the cerebral cortex in-vivo. Brussels: Paper presented at the European Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology.
44. Roberts, N., Puddephat, M. J. & McNulty, V. 2000 The benefit of stereology for quantitative radiology. Br. J. Radiol. 73, 679-697.
45. Gunderson, R. E. & Jensen, E. B. 1987 The efficiency of systematic sampling in stereology and its prediction. J. Microsc. 147, 229-263. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2818. 1987.tb02837.x)
46. Cruz-Orive, L. M. 1999 Precision of Cavalieri sections and slices with local error. J. Microsc. 193, 500-519.
47. Kiêu, K., Souchet, S. & Istas, J.1999 Precisionofsystematic sampling and transitive methods. J. Stat. Plan Infer. 77, 263-279. (doi:10.1016/S0378-3758(98)00193-1)
48. García-Fiñana, M. & Cruz-Orive, L. M. 2004 Improved variance prediction for systematic sampling on R. Statistics 38, 243-272. (doi:10.1080/0233188032000 158826)
49. García-Fiñana, M., Cruz-Orive, L. M., Mackay, C. E., Pakkenberg, B. & Roberts, N. 2003 Comparison of MR imaging against physical sectioning to estimate the volume of human cerebral compartments. NeuroImage 18, 505-516. (doi:10.1016/S1053-8119(02)00021-6)
50. Baddeley, A. & Jensen, E. 2005 Stereology for statisticians. London, UK: Chapman Hall/CRC.
51. Roberts, S. B. G., Wilson, R., Fedurek, P. & Dunbar, R. 2008 Individual differences and personal social network size and structure. Personality Indiv. Differ. 44, 954-964. (doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.10.033)
52. Ardila, A. 2008 On the evolutionary origins of executive functions. Brain Cogn. 68, 92-99. (doi:10.1016/j.bandc. 2008.03.003)
53. Janowsky, J. S., Shimamura, A. P., Kritchevsky, M. & Squire, L. M. 1989 Cognitive impairment following frontal lobe damage and its relevance to human amnesia. Behav. Neurosci. 103, 548-560. (doi:10.1037/0735-7044.103.3.548)
54. Kertesz, A. 1994 Frontal lesions and function. In Localization and neuroimaging in neuropsychology (ed. A. Kertesz), pp. 567-598. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
55. Milner, B. 1963 Effects of different brain lesions on card sorting. Arch. Neurol. 9, 90-100. (doi:10.1001/archneur. 1963.00460070100010)
56. Davidson, R. J., Putnam, K. M. & Larson, C. L. 2000 Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regu-lation-a possible prelude to violence. Science 289, 591-594. (doi:10.1126/science.289.5479.591)
57. Anderson, S. W., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D. & Damasio, A. R. 1999 Impairment of social and moral behaviour related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex. Nat. Neurosci. 2, 1032-1037. (doi:10.1038/14833)
58. Bechara, A., Tranel, D. & Damasio, H. 2000 Characterization of the decision-making deficit of patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions. Brain 123, 2189-2202. (doi:10.1093/brain/123.11.2189)
59. Tranel, D., Bechara, A., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. R. 2000 Decision making in patients with unilateral ventro-medial prefrontal cortex lesions. Soc. Neurosci. 26, 549.
60. Drevets, W. C., Price, J. L., Simpson, J. R., Todd, R. D., Reich, T., Vannier, M. & Raichle, M. E. 1997 Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders. Nature 386, 824-827. (doi:10.1038/386824a0)
61. Zatorre, R. J., Jones-Gotman, M., Evans, A. C. & Meyer, E. 1992 Functional localization and lateralization of human olfactory cortex. Nature 360, 339-340. (doi:10. 1038/360339a0)
62. Lewis, K. P. & Barton, R. A. 2006 Amygdala size and hypothalamus size predict social play frequency in non-human primates: a comparative analysis using independent contrasts. J. Comp. Psychol. 120, 31-37. (doi:10.1037/0735-7036.120.1.31)
63. Phillips, M. L., Drevets, W. C., Rauch, S. L. & Lane, R. 2003 Neurobiology of emotion perception I: the neural basis of normal emotion perception. Biol. Psychiatry 54, 504-514. (doi:10.1016/S0006-3223(03)00168-9)
64. Quirk, G. J. & Beer, J. S. 2006 Prefrontal involvement in the regulation of emotion: convergence of rat and human studies. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 16, 723-727. (doi:10. 1016/j.conb.2006.07.004)
65. Sallet, J. et al. 2011 Social network size affects neural circuits in macaques. Science 334, 697-700. (doi:10. 1126/science.1210027)
66. Ruffman, T., Perner, J., Naito, M., Parkin, L. & Clements, W. A. 1998 Older (but not younger) siblings facilitate false belief understanding. Dev. Psychol. 34, 161-174. (doi:10.1037/0012-1649.34.1.161)
67. McAlister, A. & Peterson, C. 2007 A longitudinal study of child siblings and theory of mind development. Cogn. Dev. 22, 258-270. (doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2006.10.009)