Abstract
Social navigation is a dynamic and complex process that requires the collaboration of multiple brain regions. However, the neural networks for navigation in a social space remain largely unknown. This study aimed to investigate the role of hippocampal circuit in social navigation from a resting-state fMRI data. Here, resting-state fMRI data were acquired before and after participants performed a social navigation task. By taking the anterior and posterior hippocampus (HPC) as the seeds, we calculated their connectivity with the whole brain using the seed-based static functional connectivity (sFC) and dynamic FC (dFC) approaches. We found that the sFC and dFC between the anterior HPC and supramarginal gyrus, sFC or dFC between posterior HPC and middle cingulate cortex, inferior parietal gyrus, angular gyrus, posterior cerebellum, medial superior frontal gyrus were increased after the social navigation task. These alterations were related to social cognition of tracking location in the social navigation. Moreover, participants who had more social support or less neuroticism showed a greater increase in hippocampal connectivity. These findings may highlight a more important role of the posterior hippocampal circuit in the social navigation, which is crucial for social cognition.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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The study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers: 82171914 and 81871338), Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (2022A1515011022), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1705006).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Experimental material preparation and data collection were performed by XW, LZ, BL, JL and YQ. XW conducted data analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. RH contributed to guidance, funding acquisition. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript, read and approved the final manuscript.
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Wu, X., Zhang, L., Liu, B. et al. Social navigation modulates the anterior and posterior hippocampal circuits in the resting brain. Brain Struct Funct 228, 799–813 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-023-02622-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-023-02622-1