Peng Li

Research

The team led by Prof. Van Overwalle has discovered an important role of the posterior cerebellar Crus in social mentalizing, which involves understanding others' thoughts and feelings. The evidence suggests that the cerebellar Crus creates internal models of the chronological sequences of social events, making it easier to comprehend others' social behaviors and mental states. Difficulties in this process can result in fragmented and delayed understanding, as seen in autism spectrum disorder. The short window hypothesis proposes that a reduced time window for implicit learning of social sequences may contribute to this difficulty. Proper sequencing function of the cerebellum is crucial for implicit learning. We are using a new ultimatum serial response time (SRT) task to examine how limitations in time windows and chunking of social action sequences delay social learning in neurotypical and autistic participants. Subsequently, we will investigate how transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can alleviate impaired chunking ability. We anticipate that tDCS will lead to improved sequencing of social events and, consequently, a faster acquisition of high-level social abstractions.

Supervisors

prof. dr. Chris Baeken

prof. dr. Frank van Overwalle