Abstract
To what extent do brains of different individuals operate in a similar manner? Previous studies have explored this issue by comparing the time-course of brain responses during natural viewing and have found a high level of correspondence in the brain responses across individuals. However, a variety of evidence has shown that individuals from different social groups can vary markedly in the way that they interpret the world. A key question in this regard is whether group differences in neural processing occur at early stages of processing when sensory information is encoded or whether they are evident at later stages of processing, which are more involved in interpreting the input. To explore the neural basis of these differences, we measured brain responses using fMRI from two groups of football supporters, while they watched a video of matches between their teams (Chelsea and Manchester United). First, we measured the time-course of responses in face-, place-, object- and body-selective regions of visual cortex. We found high correlations across individuals in the time-course of neural response across high-level visual cortex. A cluster analysis revealed distinct networks of activation among these regions during natural viewing. However, these high-level visual regions did not show any group differences. That is, the correlations in the neural response between individuals supporting the same team were not higher than between individuals supporting different teams. Regions that showed higher correlations for individuals from the same group were found in a network of frontal and subcortical brain regions that are involved in motor control, social cognition and reward. Together, these results suggest that group differences in processing visual input are not found in sensory regions of the brain, but are evident in regions that are involved in the evaluation and interpretation of the sensory signals.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018