Replay shapes abstract cognitive maps for efficient social navigation

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)

Abstract

To make adaptive social decisions, people must anticipate how information flows through their social network. While this requires knowledge of how people are connected, networks are too large to have firsthand experience with every possible route between individuals. How, then, are people able to accurately track information flow through social networks? We find that people immediately cache abstract knowledge about social network structure as they learn who is friends with whom, which enables the identification of efficient routes between remotely-connected individuals. These cognitive maps of social networks, which are built while learning, are then reshaped through overnight rest. During these extended periods of rest, a replay-like mechanism helps to make these maps increasingly abstract, which privileges improvements in social navigation accuracy for the longest communication paths that span distinct communities within the network. Together, these findings provide mechanistic insight into the sophisticated mental representations humans use for social navigation.

Authors 4

1. Jae-Young Son

   Brown University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

2. Marc–Lluís Vives Aachen Institute of Psychology, Leiden University

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

3. Apoorva Bhandari corresponding

   Brown University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

4. Oriel FeldmanHall corresponding

   Brown University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

   Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA