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A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance
Open accessAbstract
Distance describes more than physical space: we speak of close friends and distant relatives, and of the near future and distant past. Did these ubiquitous spatial metaphors arise in language coincidentally or did they arise because they are rooted in a common neural computation? To address this question, we used statistical pattern recognition techniques to analyze human fMRI data. First, a machine learning algorithm was trained to discriminate patterns of fMRI responses based on relative egocentric distance within trials from one distance domain (e.g., photographs of objects relatively close to or far away from the viewer in spatial distance trials). Next, we tested whether the decision boundary generated from this training could distinguish brain responses according to relative egocentric distance within each of two separate distance domains (e.g., phrases referring to the immediate or more remote future within temporal distance trials; photographs of participants' friends or acquaintances within social distance trials). This procedure was repeated using all possible combinations of distance domains for training and testing the classifier. In all cases, above-chance decoding across distance domains was possible in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Furthermore, the representational similarity structure within this brain area reflected participants' own judgments of spatial distance, temporal soon-ness, and social familiarity. Thus, the right IPL may contain a parsimonious encoding of proximity to self in spatial, temporal, and social frames of reference.
Overview
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Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
Using fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis, the paper reports that relative egocentric distance can be decoded across spatial, temporal, and social domains in right inferior parietal lobule (IPL), with representational similarity in this region tracking participants’ subjective distance ratings. The authors conclude that right IPL may contain a common cortical metric for proximity to self across these domains.
Key findings
- Cross-domain distance decoding was above chance for all pairwise combinations of spatial, temporal, and social domains in right IPL; the largest cluster was 273 voxels in right IPL (AG/STG, BA 39/22), with average peak accuracy 62.33%, and a medial occipital cluster (200 voxels, BA 18) had average peak accuracy 66.12% (Table 1).
- RSA showed that local neural similarity structure was significantly related to behavioral distance ratings in right IPL (113 voxels, BA 39/40), left SMA (BA 6), and right IFG (BA 47) (Table 2).
- Postscan ratings were high for closer (6.21 ± 0.70), sooner (6.29 ± 0.82), and more familiar (6.52 ± 0.62) trials on a 1–7 scale, with no significant difference across domains (F(2,22) = 1.94, p = 0.17); probe response accuracy during scanning was 97.97 ± 1.34%.
- Univariate analyses found no voxels surviving FDR-corrected p < 0.05 for sooner vs later, closer vs farther, or more familiar vs less familiar trials; even at p < 0.01 uncorrected, no regions emerged in the conjunction analysis, suggesting distributed patterns rather than average magnitude carried the cross-domain distance information.
Methods
- Fifteen participants (10 females; aged 20–28 years; mean age 24.6 years) were scanned at 3 T during a slow event-related fMRI paradigm with spatial object photographs, temporal phrases, and social names/photographs; there were 96 unique trials, 8 runs, 36 trials per run, and six trial types. Twelve participants completed the postscan distance-rating questionnaire.
- MVPA used searchlights (radius 3 voxels) with a linear SVM trained to discriminate relative distance within one domain and tested on another, repeated for all pairwise domain combinations; accuracy maps were arcsine transformed, tested against chance across participants, and submitted to a conjunction analysis at p < 0.05 FDR corrected.
- RSA compared neural representational dissimilarity matrices (Pearson correlation distances between local multivoxel patterns) with behavioral RDMs (Euclidean distances between postscan ratings) using Spearman’s rank coefficient and permutation testing with 1000 shuffles; conventional univariate GLM paired t tests were also run.
Limitations
- The paper states that its evolutionary “recycling” interpretation provides “preliminary support” and calls for future studies; it does not present a formal limitations section.
- Evident from the text: the sample was modest (n = 15, with only 12 completing postscan ratings), cross-domain decoding accuracies were modest (roughly 60–66% versus 50% chance), and the univariate analyses found no significant effects, so the main conclusions rest on MVPA and RSA.
- Evident from the text: temporal distance stimuli could in principle be compared by duration without self-reference, although the authors argue this would often produce incorrect cross-domain classifications.
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A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In all cases, above-chance decoding across distance domains was possible in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Abstract
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passes- Rests on an assumption: The spatial, temporal, and social distance stimuli validly operationalize egocentric distance in their respective domains.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Furthermore, the representational similarity structure within this brain area reflected participants' own judgments of spatial distance, temporal soon-ness, and social familiarity.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Abstract
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passes- Rests on an assumption: The spatial, temporal, and social distance stimuli validly operationalize egocentric distance in their respective domains.
- Rests on an assumption: Participants' postscan ratings of psychological distance accurately reflect their subjective psychological distance.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Results of postscan written questionnaires confirmed that participants perceived stimuli pairs from trials in all domains to differ substantially in terms of relative egocentric psychological distance.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Behavioral results
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passes- Rests on an assumption: Postscan written questionnaire ratings reflect participants' perceived egocentric psychological distance during scanning.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Clusters (cluster size Ͼ10 voxels) in which relative egocentric distance could be decoded across all possible pairwise combinations of distance domains are presented in Table 1.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification results
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesA result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Representational content within a large cluster in the right IPL was significantly related to behavioral distance ratings, suggesting that population codes within searchlights centered in this area contain representations that reflect subjective perceptions of egocentric distance.”
- Also stated in: § Discussion · plain
“Additionally, the similarity structure of population codes in this region reflected subjective proximity ratings.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > RSA results
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passes- Also stated in: § Discussion · plain
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In several clusters throughout the right IPL, a classifier trained to distinguish trials based on relative egocentric distance within any single domain could distinguish trials within any other domain according to distance above chance across participants.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesA result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“A one-way ANOVA indicated that perceived relative psychological distance did not significantly differ across the three tested domains of psychological distance (F (2,22) ϭ 1.94, p ϭ 0.17, G 2 ϭ 0.09).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Behavioral results
Load-bearingStrength:hedged· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passes- Rests on an assumption: Postscan written questionnaire ratings reflect participants' perceived egocentric psychological distance during scanning.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“All voxels in each of these clusters were associated with significantly abovechance classification across participants for each of the six group analyses ( p Ͻ 0.05, FDR corrected, each test).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification results
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesA result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Specifically, relative egocentric distance could be decoded across all distance domains above chance across participants in searchlight spheres centered on voxels in a large (273-voxel) cluster in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus (STG; Fig. 2D).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification results
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesA result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“One-sample t tests indicated that distance ratings for stimulus pairs from each domain significantly differed from 1 (equally soon/close/familiar; all p values Ͻ0.00001).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Behavioral results
Load-bearingStrength:hedged· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passes- Rests on an assumption: Postscan written questionnaire ratings reflect participants' perceived egocentric psychological distance during scanning.
- It may state two separate claims as one. 13
- Probably not a substantial claim. 24
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The largest significant cluster was located in right IPL, encompassing both the AG and SMG, and extending into the posterior temporal lobe, followed by a cluster in medial occipital cortex.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
- Rests on an assumption: The spatial, temporal, and social distance stimuli validly operationalize egocentric distance in their respective domains.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Mean Ϯ SD ratings of perceived egocentric distance differences on a scale from 1 (equally soon/close/familiar) to 7 (one image/phrase is a great deal sooner/closer/more familiar) were 6.21 Ϯ 0.70, 6.29 Ϯ 0.82, and 6.52 Ϯ 0.62 for closer, sooner, and more familiar trials, respectively.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Behavioral results
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
- Rests on an assumption: Postscan written questionnaire ratings reflect participants' perceived egocentric psychological distance during scanning.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Cross-domain distance decoding was also possible in smaller clusters throughout the right IPL, spanning both the supramarginal (SMG) and angular (AG) gyri, as well as in one cluster in medial occipital cortex, as summarized in Table 1.”
- Also stated in: § Discussion · plain
“Cross-domain distance decoding was also possible in medial occipital cortex.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification results
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
- Also stated in: § Discussion · plain
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Neuroscientists have suggested that, over the course of evolution, mechanisms devoted to spatial processing may have been redeployed to “plot” information in increasingly abstract (e.g., temporal, social) frames of reference (Yamazaki et al., 2009;Parkinson and Wheatley, 2013).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Yamazaki et al., 2009
- Not checked yetcites Parkinson and Wheatley, 2013
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Words characterizing shorter social and temporal distances are automatically associated with closer spatial locations, whereas words referring to increased social and temporal distances are associated with farther locations (Bar-Anan et al., 2007).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Bar-Anan et al., 2007
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Previous fMRI studies suggest that judging and traversing spatial, social, and temporal distances recruit overlapping brain regions (Buckner and Carroll, 2007;Spreng et al., 2009;Yamakawa et al., 2009;Yamazaki et al., 2009;Tamir and Mitchell, 2011).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Buckner and Carroll, 2007
- Not checked yetcites Spreng et al., 2009
- Not checked yetcites Yamakawa et al., 2009
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“However, past studies have used univariate analyses that spatially smooth and average data to identify areas involved in tasks (Friston et al., 1995).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Friston et al., 1995
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) suggests that we use spatial language to describe social and temporal relationships (e.g., “close friend,” “distant future”) because we mentally represent this information in spatial terms.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Lakoff and Johnson, 1980
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“If different domains of egocentric distance are conflated at some level of processing, relatively near or far distances should be represented similarly at that level of processing, regardless of domain.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
Load-bearingStrength:hedged· not yet calibratedTests✗ Asserted: fails✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✗ Based: failsProbably not a substantial claim. The authors may not put it forward as true. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
In the paper
“In general, RSA permits the direct, quantitative comparison of data acquired using diverse methods (e.g., fMRI, behavioral questionnaires) in terms of the information that each dataset contains about a set of experimental conditions.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kriegeskorte et al., 2008
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Percent accuracy maps resulting from crossdomain distance decoding analyses were aligned to standard space (Talairach and Tournoux, 1988) and arcsine transformed ( y ϭ arcsine͌x, where x is proportion of classifications that were correct, and y is the result of the transformation) before being tested against chance across participants, because this procedure approximates a normal and homoscedastic”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Freeman and Tukey, 1950
- Not checked yetcites Zar, 1996
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“At each searchlight center, the statistical significance of the relationship between the behavioral and local neural RDMs was evaluated using permutation testing.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“The RTPJ encodes egocentric space (Schindler and Bartels, 2013) and is thought to support self-other distinctions (Decety and Somerville, 2003).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Schindler and Bartels, 2013
- Not checked yetcites Decety and Somerville, 2003
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“These stimuli were tested previously to ensure that viewers perceive them to be at the intended egocentric distances and have been demonstrated previously to automatically elicit egocentric distance processing (Berryhill and Olson, 2009).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Spatial distance stimuli.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Berryhill and Olson, 2009
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Letter counts also did not significantly differ between immediate (median, 13.50) and remote (median, 12.50) future phrases (W ϭ 6, p ϭ 0.65, r ϭ 0.16).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Temporal distance stimuli.
Strength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✗ Load-bearing: fails✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“Thus, evidence from social psychology and neuroimaging demonstrates analogous effects of different distance domains on cognition and behavior, consistent with suggestions that this information implies a common psychological meaning (Liberman and Trope, 2008).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Liberman and Trope, 2008
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Recently, Tamir and Mitchell (2011) found fMRI evidence consistent with behavioral findings that different distance domains influence our thoughts and actions analogously.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Tamir and Mitchell (2011)
Strength:plain· not yet calibratedCausal:correlational· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✗ Load-bearing: fails✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“A conjunction analysis of these six t statistic maps was performed using a threshold of p Ͻ 0.05, false discovery rate (FDR; Benjamini and Hochberg, 1995) corrected, for each map to identify regions in which psychological distance could be decoded across all distance domains.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Benjamini and Hochberg, 1995 source
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Because the conjunction analysis requires above-chance distance decoding across all pairs of distance domains, this approach should identify areas that contain a domain-general encoding of egocentric distance.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes? Based: unclearIt may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Red indicates the conjunction of significant results ( p Ͻ 0.05, FDR corrected, each test) across all six tests.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“It should be emphasized that, for each classification searchlight, predictions were only considered correct if trials characterized by decreasing psychological distance in the test domain (e.g., more familiar trials) were classified as if they were trials characterized by decreasing psychological distance in the training domain (e.g., sooner trials).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Both a shared encoding mechanism and nearby but distinct codes would yield overlapping results (Peelen and Downing, 2007).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Peelen and Downing, 2007
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Ratings did not differ between the two versions of the questionnaire.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Social distance stimuli.
Strength:plain· not yet calibratedSingle caseTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✗ Load-bearing: fails✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Additionally, rather than assuming that all distance domains were perceived equivalently, this data analytic approach preserves differences in behavioral ratings between domains.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Custom code was written in Python and PyMVPA to compare the off-diagonal elements of the lower triangular halves of the neural and behavioral RDMs at each voxel for each participant (Fig. 3C) using the Spearman's rank coefficient, which was used because it does not assume a linear match between neural and behavioral RDMs (Kriegeskorte et al., 2008).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kriegeskorte et al., 2008
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“According to construal level theory (CLT; Trope and Liberman, 2010), distance in any domain signifies a common meaning: distance from current first-hand experience.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Trope and Liberman, 2010
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Walsh (2003) suggested that, on the scale of action execution, space, time, and quantity are encoded by a common metric that was repurposed for other magnitudes.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Walsh (2003)
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Additionally, the number of plural nouns was exactly matched between the two trial types (i.e., exactly two of the immediate future phrases and two of the remote future phrases contained one plural noun).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Temporal distance stimuli.
Strength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✗ Load-bearing: fails✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Importantly, the conjunction analysis requires above-chance distance decoding across all pairs of distance domains.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Classification analyses.
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✗ Based: failsProbably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Familiar and unfamiliar others were matched for gender, race, age, and facial expression (which was either neutral or slightly positive).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Social distance stimuli.
Load-bearingStrength:plain· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Whereas information relevant to our present experience elicits detailed, concrete representations, humans tend to think about information removed from our current experience using decontextualized, abstract representations (Liberman and Trope, 2008).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Liberman and Trope, 2008
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“CLT suggests that psychologically proximal information promotes attention to concrete, contextual details, whereas distal information evokes decontextualized, abstract representations (Liberman and Trope, 2008).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Liberman and Trope, 2008
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Close objects are likely to be personally relevant and elicit immediate action and, thus, may evoke similar SMA activation patterns.”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“More generally, the current results are consistent with suggestions that neural mechanisms supporting higher-order cognition may often be best understood in terms of the computations, rather than the domains of knowledge, that they involve (Mitchell, 2008).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Mitchell, 2008
Strength:hedged· not yet calibratedTests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✗ Load-bearing: fails✓ Based: passesProbably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Relationships between domains of psychological distance are distinguished from those between other source and target domains because any domain of psychological distance confers a chronically accessible, automatically processed common meaning (Bar-Anan et al., 2006, 2007) that affects perception, cognition, and behavior similarly (Liberman and Trope, 2008).”
§ Behavioral/Cognitive A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Bar-Anan et al., 2006, 2007
- Not checked yetcites Liberman and Trope, 2008
Tests✓ Asserted: passes✓ Checkable: passes✓ Load-bearing: passes✓ Based: passesIt may state two separate claims as one.
The paper relies on this without support.
The spatial, temporal, and social distance stimuli validly operationalize egocentric distance in their respective domains.
“To make distances meaningfully comparable across domains, participants were asked to compare each stimulus with a reference point or anchor from the same distance domain.”
The paper relies on this without support.
Participants' postscan ratings of psychological distance accurately reflect their subjective psychological distance.
“After scanning, 12 participants completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire consisting of behavioral ratings of psychological distance between stimuli.”
The paper relies on this without support.
The probe questions ensured that participants compared the anchor and target stimuli in terms of relative egocentric distance rather than other aspects of the stimuli.
“a probe (e.g., “Later?”) that was intended to ensure that participants were comparing the anchor and target stimuli in the intended manner (i.e., in terms of relative egocentric distance and not other aspects of the stimuli).”
The paper relies on this without support.
Postscan written questionnaire ratings reflect participants' perceived egocentric psychological distance during scanning.
“Results of postscan written questionnaires confirmed that participants perceived stimuli pairs from trials in all domains to differ substantially in terms of relative egocentric psychological distance.”
“After scanning, 12 participants rated each pair of stimuli seen in the scanner in terms of relative temporal soon-ness, social familiarity, and physical closeness on a 1-7 point scale.”
The paper relies on this without support.
Cross-domain decoding accuracy above chance reflects a shared neural representation of relative egocentric distance rather than shared task or stimulus properties.
“This suggests, at least at the current level of observation, using the current experimental paradigm, that the local distributed patterns, rather than average magnitude, of fMRI responses contain information that distinguishes between different relative egocentric distances across social, spatial, and temporal distance domains.”
“In several clusters throughout the right IPL, a classifier trained to distinguish trials based on relative egocentric distance within any single domain could distinguish trials within any other domain according to distance above chance across participants.”
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“In this way, self PPS may contribute to gaining social, temporal and physical proximity with the others around us in addition to the regulation of social distances (Parkinson, Liu, & Wheatley, 2014;Ruggiero et al., 2019;Sorokowska et al., 2017).”
From The Peripersonal Space in a social world (2021) · cites this paper as Parkinson, Liu, & Wheatley, 2014
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn the citing paper
“Several specific brain regions represent participants’ assessment of power (social status in the community) (Muscatell et al., 2012) or affiliation (familiarity of acquaintances) (Parkinson et al., 2014).”
From A map for social navigation in the human brain (2015) · cites this paper as Parkinson et al., 2014
Citations
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Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Zar JH (1996) Biostatistical analysis (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Wolff, P., & Barbey, A. K. (2015) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00001 · Cited by 788
The varieties of self-transcendent experience
Yaden, D. B., Haidt, J., Hood, R. W., Vago, D. R., & Newberg, A. B. (2017) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/gpr0000102 · Cited by 701
A map for social navigation in the human brain
Tavares, R. M., Mendelsohn, A., Grossman, Y., Williams, C. H., Shapiro, M., Trope, Y., & Schiller, D. (2015) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.06.011 · Cited by 505
The Geometry of Abstraction in the Hippocampus and Prefrontal Cortex
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Brain system for mental orientation in space, time, and person
Peer, M., Salomon, R., Goldberg, I., Blanke, O., & Arzy, S. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1504242112 · Cited by 296
Metadata
- Authors
- Parkinson, C., Liu, S., & Wheatley, T.
- Affiliations
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2014-01-29
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1979-1987
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6827593
- OpenAlex
- W2056416465
- Semantic Scholar
- 296de32d21658f7b60833ad09ddc6e7ae6dde5af
- Cited by
- 198
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5
- FWCI
- 17.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Dartmouth College
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- spatial distance, temporal distance, social distance, egocentric distance, inferior parietal lobule, representational similarity, spatial metaphor, social familiarity
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Algorithms, Analysis of Variance, Artificial Intelligence, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Judgment, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Oxygen, Surveys and Questionnaires, Reaction Time, Psychological Distance, Space Perception, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-09, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).
A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-09 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
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