Exploring the Relationship Between Social Expertise and Ability to Process Different Types of Abstract Concepts and the Neural Resources Allocated to Their Processing

Social interaction is supported by several brain regions, which are involved in encoding socio-perceptual information, attributing affective and mental states to other conspecifics, and ultimately enabling the orchestration of an appropriate response. In this view, cognitive control mechanisms are necessary to select relevant information, allocate resources, and generate inferences. There is a close link between the mechanisms underlying social cognition and social conceptual knowledge, relating, for example, to abstract concepts such as "friendship". For example, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impairments in social interactions, and also in the ability to use all those abstract concepts that relate to internal states of the individual as well as to interactions between people. Behavioral studies have shown how experience can impact the characterization of abstract concepts, influencing their personal, introspective, and contextual characteristics. Neuroimaging studies have also reported that, through mechanisms of brain plasticity, experience modulates neural networks shared with non-experts (e.g., by increasing brain volume and/or functional activity), but can also lead to the recruitment of additional brain resources, thus enriching the knowledge gained by experts. To date, the role of different types and levels of expertise in influencing the neural representation of specific categories of abstract concepts, and in particular social concepts, has not yet been fully elucidated.