Our brains are obsessed with being social even when we are not in social situations. A Dartmouth-led study finds that the brain may tune towards social learning even when it is at rest. The findings published in an advance article of Cerebral Cortex, demonstrate empirically for the first time how two regions of the brain experience increased connectivity during rest after encoding new social information. (A pdf of the study is available upon request).

The study examines the role of two brain regions, the medial prefrontal cortex and tempoparietal junction, which are integral to social inference or our ability to evaluate other people's personalities, mental states and intentions. Previous research has found that these two regions tend to experience a spontaneous spike in connectivity during rest and as such, are considered part of the brain's default network. The Dartmouth-led research team examined if these two default network regions consolidate social information during rest.

"We've known for a while that brain regions associated with social thinking engage rest but we really never understood why. This study suggests an important function to this pattern: engaging these regions during rest may help us learn about our social environment," said lead author Meghan L. Meyer, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, and director of the Dartmouth Social Neuroscience Lab.

For the study, 19 participants were asked to complete social encoding and non-social encoding tasks during a brain scan session while undergoing fMRI. Before encoding, they had a baseline rest scan and after each task, a resting state scan of 8.4 minutes, where they could think about anything, as long as they stayed awake.