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Saxe, R. & Wexler, A. Making sense of another mind: the role of the right temporo-parietal junction. Neuropsychologia 43, 1391-1399
Abstract
Human adults conceive of one another as beings with minds, and attribute to one another mental states like perceptions, desires and beliefs. That is, we understand other people using a 'Theory of Mind'. The current study investigated the contributions of four brain regions to Theory of Mind reasoning. The right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) was recruited selectively for the attribution of mental states, and not for other socially relevant facts about a person, and the response of the RTPJ was modulated by the congruence or incongruence of multiple relevant facts about the target's mind. None of the other three brain regions commonly implicated in Theory of Mind reasoning--the left temporo-parietal junction (LTPJ), posterior cingulate (PC) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC)--showed an equally selective profile of response. The implications of these results for an alternative theory of reasoning about other minds--Simulation Theory--are discussed.
... As reviewed by Rilling and Sankey (2011), critical areas include the subdivisions of the prefrontal cortex (involved in evaluating long-term benefits and in the cognitive effort to control for impulses), the anterior cingulate cortex and the striatum (involved in reward mechanisms and in reaction to social norm violations), the anterior insula (involved in inequity aversion and empathy), and the amygdala (involved in the emotional responses associated with the decision). Moreover, recent studies outlined the contribution of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), mainly in the right hemisphere (rTPJ), which would be involved in the attribution of intentions to others and in the process of mentalizing (Hao et al., 2023;Langenbach et al., 2022;Lee & Seo, 2016;Saxe & Wexler, 2005). Other studies also described an involvement of the TPJ in fairness and moral judgements (Jeurissen et al., 2014;Ye et al., 2015;Young et al., 2010) and in the network underlying rational choices (Kahnt & Tobler, 2013;Ni & Li, 2021;Zhang et al., 2017). ...
... This made possible to interfere with the activity of the rTPJ during the decision making process in responders and to obtain cues on the involvement of this region in evaluating the different offers received. On the basis of the previous literature (Güroǧlu et al., 2010;Jeurissen et al., 2014;Saxe & Wexler, 2005;Zhang et al., 2017), three possible scenarios were plausible. First, if the rTPJ contributes to the processes of decision making, interfering with its activity would affect the whole process of bargains' evaluation, thus producing higher rejections in fair, unfair, and no alternative offers. ...
... Analogously, if the rTPJ was involved in judgements of morality and fairness as elicited by the mini-UG task (Jeurissen et al., 2014;Young et al., 2010), we would have observed higher rates of rejections in response to both unfair and no alternative offers (not in response to fair offers). Therefore, the present data supported a crucial involvement of the rTPJ in the attribution of intention to the proposer when evaluating the context in which the proposal is made and, importantly, in evaluating proposer's intentionality (Hao et al., 2023;Langenbach et al., 2022;Lee & Seo, 2016;Saxe & Wexler, 2005). ...
The mini-Ultimatum Game (mini-UG) is a bargaining game used to assess the reactions of a responder to unfair offers made by a proposer under different intentionality conditions. Previous studies employing this task showed the activation of responders’ right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), which could be related to its involvement in judgments of intentionality. To verify this hypothesis, in the present study we applied online transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the rTPJ in responders during the mini-UG, in which we manipulated intention attribution implicitly. A cover story was employed to induce participants to believe they were interacting with another agent. We expected that interfering with the rTPJ could affect the ability of responders to assume proposers’ perspective, producing higher rates of rejections of unfair offers when offers are perceived as independent from responders’ intentionality to inequality. Twenty-six healthy women voluntarily participated in the study. In the mini-UG, an unfair distribution of the proposer (8/2 offer) was pitted against one of three alternative offers: fair-alternative (5/5), no-alternative (8/2), hyperfair-alternative (2/8). During the task, a train of TMS pulses was delivered at proposers’ offer presentation in blocks of active (rTPJ) or control (Vertex) stimulation according to an ABAB design. As expected, findings showed that rejection of the no-alternative offers was higher under TMS stimulation of the rTPJ compared with the control TMS. This effect was modulated by the degree of trustworthiness in the cover story. These data contribute defining the mechanisms and brain areas underpinning social decision making as assessed by bargaining tasks.
... Recent studies have indicated that these regions may support a very basic component of social cognition-that is, social concept representation and processing [10][11][12][13][14] . These regions are sensitive to a wide range of social concepts (concepts associated with people and their interactions), including traits (for example, brave 15 ), mental states (for example, distrust 16 ), stereotypes (for example, women 17 ), social backgrounds (for example, having a good salary 18 ), social actions (for example, chase [19][20][21] and social artefacts (for example, telephone 22 ). ...
... Most previous studies on the relationship between language and social cognition focused on the ability to reason about mental states, which is known as theory of mind (ToM) 1,45,66-68 . The key regions supporting ToM are the right TPJ and dmPFC 18,69 , which are often engaged in the comprehension of stories and non-literal meanings 6,66,70 . We assume that in comparison with ToM, social-semantic working memory is a more general and basic social-cognitive component that connects language comprehension with social cognition: it is not specific to mental states but is involved in the processing of a wide range of social concepts, and it forms the basis of social-semantic manipulation and integration, which in turn supports higher-order social cognition such as ToM. ...
... We assume that in comparison with ToM, social-semantic working memory is a more general and basic social-cognitive component that connects language comprehension with social cognition: it is not specific to mental states but is involved in the processing of a wide range of social concepts, and it forms the basis of social-semantic manipulation and integration, which in turn supports higher-order social cognition such as ToM. Consistent with our view, in the field of social neuroscience, the left vTPJ and lATL are associated with not only ToM 71,72 but also other social functions 18,62,73 ; in the field of language comprehension, the left vTPJ and lATL are involved in not only the comprehension of stories 6 and non-literal meanings 74 but also social-semantic comprehension of sentences 42 , phrases 13,75 and words 19,20,22,76 . ...
Language and social cognition are traditionally studied as separate cognitive domains, yet accumulative studies reveal overlapping neural correlates at the left ventral temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and the left lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL), which have been attributed to sentence processing and social concept activation. We propose a common cognitive component underlying both effects: social-semantic working memory. We confirmed two key predictions of our hypothesis using functional MRI. First, the left vTPJ and lATL showed sensitivity to sentences only when the sentences conveyed social meaning; second, these regions showed persistent social-semantic-selective activity after the linguistic stimuli disappeared. We additionally found that both regions were sensitive to the socialness of non-linguistic stimuli and were more tightly connected with the social-semantic-processing areas than with the sentence-processing areas. The converging evidence indicates the social-semantic working-memory function of the left vTPJ and lATL and challenges the general-semantic and/or syntactic accounts for the neural activity of these regions.
... The EEG data from each electrode and each frequency band were converted in realtime into Power Spectral Density (PSD) via Fast Fourier Transformation and computed for each frequency band: delta (1-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), beta (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), and gamma (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44). ...
... Thus, as a third interesting effect, we observed a higher activation of the delta, theta, alpha and beta bands in TP10 during the less effortful compared to more effortful choice. With reference to the localization of this significant neural effect in the right temporoparietal area, the right Temporo Parietal Junction (rTPJ) has been consistently shown to be significant when inferring and comprehending the mental states of others in several fMRI studies, highlighting its notable relevance for ToM processing [43,44]. However, the right TPJ also plays a role in other cognitive processes, and is shown to be involved in interactional mechanisms in which awareness permits the control of attention [45] and decision-making processes. ...
Background: A more rewarding choice, even if it requires more effort, is usually preferred by individuals; yet, in some cases, individuals choose less profitable and less tiring options. This study explored the behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG) correlates of healthy adults performing a task, designed to investigate the decision-making process behind the selection of more effortful (but highly monetarily rewarding) and less effortful (but less monetarily rewarding) options. Methods: A sample of 20 healthy adults (mean age = 46.40) performed the decision-making task, while behavioral data and EEG frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, and beta) were collected. The Maximization Scale (MS) was administered to evaluate individuals’ differences in the tendency to maximize their choices. Results: the results showed a general preference for selecting more compared to less effortful options, while no significant differences were obtained for the response times. Individuals who score higher on the MS High Standards subscale are more inclined to choose less effortful options; conversely, those with lower scores are more likely to choose a more effortful and rewarding option. However, no significant correlations were found between the behavioral data and the alternative search, or the decision difficulty subscales of the MS. EEG findings reported a significant interaction effect Choice × Electrode in delta, theta, alpha and beta bands. Specifically, the choice of less effortful options is associated with a higher increase in delta, theta, alpha, and beta band power in the right temporoparietal area (TP10) and by a lower activation of delta and theta in the contralateral site (TP9). The delta band decreased in left frontal area (AF7) during the task for the less versus more effortful options. Conclusions: Overall, despite more effortful and more monetarily rewarding options seeming to be the most rational ones to choose, less effortful choices are associated with specific EEG correlates, suggesting that there is a perceived advantage in avoiding automatisms, delaying gratification, and maximizing future possibilities.
... This task is described in detail in Saxe and Kanwisher (2003) and in subsequent studies from the Saxe lab (e.g. Saxe and Wexler 2005;Young et al. 2010;Bruneau, Pluta, et al. 2012b; among others; available for download from http://saxelab.mit.edu/useour-efficient-false-belief-localizer). The verbal ToM localizer targets "representational ToM" (Saxe 2006), akin to "cognitive ToM" (Shamay-Tsoory et al. 2010;Dennis et al. 2013), that is, inferences about the propositional content of agents' beliefs, desires, etc., to the exclusion of "affective ToM," roughly, the capacity to understand and empathize with others' emotional states (e.g. ...
... Each vignette was followed by a true/false comprehension question. This localizer task has been extensively validated and has been shown to be robust to the variation in the materials, modality of presentation, and task (Saxe and Kanwisher 2003;Saxe and Wexler 2005;Saxe and Powell 2006;Young et al. 2010;Dodell-Feder et al. 2011;Bruneau, Dufour, et al. 2012a;Koster-Hale and Saxe 2013); 149 participants completed 2 runs, each lasting for 4 m 22 s and consisting of 5 vignettes per condition. The remaining 2 participants who completed 1 run were excluded from the analysis of verbal ToM localizer activations but were used for the analysis of responses of the ToM areas to the conditions of the nonverbal ToM localizer. ...
Language comprehension and the ability to infer others’ thoughts (theory of mind [ToM]) are interrelated during development and language use. However, neural evidence that bears on the relationship between language and ToM mechanisms is mixed. Although robust dissociations have been reported in brain disorders, brain activations for contrasts that target language and ToM bear similarities, and some have reported overlap. We take another look at the language-ToM relationship by evaluating the response of the language network, as measured with fMRI, to verbal and nonverbal ToM across 151 participants. Individual-participant analyses reveal that all core language regions respond more strongly when participants read vignettes about false beliefs compared to the control vignettes. However, we show that these differences are largely due to linguistic confounds, and no such effects appear in a nonverbal ToM task. These results argue against cognitive and neural overlap between language processing and ToM. In exploratory analyses, we find responses to social processing in the “periphery” of the language network—right-hemisphere homotopes of core language areas and areas in bilateral angular gyri—but these responses are not selectively ToM-related and may reflect general visual semantic processing.
... Indeed, the role of the AG is a focus of great debate within the semantic cognition literature (Graves et al. 2010;Seghier et al. 2010;Binder and Desai 2011;Noonan et al. 2013;Seghier 2013;Davey et al. 2015;Humphreys et al. 2021) and the laterality of the semantic network is task-and stimulidependent (Rice et al. 2015. Similarly, although theory of mind is often considered to rely on right-lateralized areas (Saxe and Wexler 2005;Döhnel et al. 2012), it may be that these laterality differences are present only after subtracting a left-lateralized verbal semantics network through the use of a non-mentalizing story in false belief tasks. Thus, a more nuanced explanation may require consideration of multiple different factors affecting both the recruitment of the AG and the laterality of the network engaged, such as the use of sentences (Branzi et al. 2020;Humphreys et al. 2020), the stimulus modality, and the effect of difficulty-dependent deactivation (Raichle et al. 2001;Jackson et al. 2019), as well as the social nature of the stimuli. ...
... Faces similarly showed a right hemisphere focus, with only a small cluster in the left hemisphere, located in the homologue of the right pSTS cluster. It is also notable that the overall pattern of relative lateralization in the biological motion and faces domains seen in the present analysis is consistent with the suggestion that social domains are typically right-lateralized (Grossman et al. 2000;Saxe et al. 2004;Saxe and Wexler 2005;Rossion et al. 2012;Dasgupta et al. 2017), and with connectivity analyses that find the right pSTS to be more strongly connected to other biological motion and face processing regions in the right hemisphere, than the left pSTS is to its counterparts (Dasgupta et al. 2017). However, it is important to be cautious when interpreting lateralization in the present results, as a lack of extensive left hemisphere activation likelihood for a given domain does not prove that additional left pLTC regions are not recruited. ...
The posterior lateral temporal cortex is implicated in many verbal, nonverbal, and social cognitive domains and processes. Yet without directly comparing these disparate domains, the region’s organization remains unclear; do distinct processes engage discrete subregions, or could different domains engage shared neural correlates and processes? Here, using activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses, the bilateral posterior lateral temporal cortex subregions engaged in 7 domains were directly compared. These domains comprised semantics, semantic control, phonology, biological motion, face processing, theory of mind, and representation of tools. Although phonology and biological motion were predominantly associated with distinct regions, other domains implicated overlapping areas, perhaps due to shared underlying processes. Theory of mind recruited regions implicated in semantic representation, tools engaged semantic control areas, and faces engaged subregions for biological motion and theory of mind. This cross-domain approach provides insight into how posterior lateral temporal cortex is organized and why.
... One of the aftereffects of OBEs is the feeling of being like a 'sponge' and having very 'thin boundaries' with others, which leads to empathetic and intuitive thoughts (Rabeyron and Loose, 2015). Findings in neuroscience research shed light on the concept of empathic behavior by underlining that mirror neurons, localized in many areas of the brain including the TPJ, are activated when humans attribute to one another mental states-when we reason about others, interpret, and predict their behavior (Saxe and Wexler, 2005;Saxe and Kanwisher, 2013;Van der Meer et al., 2011;Scholz et al., 2009). This high-level cognitive process is known as the theory of mind and is a necessary condition for empathy (Goldstein, Wu and Winner, 2009). ...
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are subjective phenomena during which individuals feel disembodied or perceive themselves as outside of their physical bodies, often resulting in profound and transformative effects. In particular, experiencers report greater heightened pro-social behavior, including more peaceful relationships, tolerance, and empathy. Drawing parallels with the phenomenon of ego dissolution induced by certain psyche-delic substances, we explore the notion that OBEs may engender these changes through ego dissolution, which fosters a deep-seated sense of unity and interconnectedness with others. We then assess potential brain mechanisms underlying the link between OBEs and empathy, considering the involvement of the temporoparietal junction and the Default Mode Network. This manuscript offers an examination of the potential pathways through which OBEs catalyze empathic enhancement, shedding light on the intricate interplay between altered states of consciousness and human empathy.
... The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is involved in various cognitive functions, like understanding other people's intentions and behavior (Theory of Mind; Saxe and Kanwisher [11,44,75,76], visual search and orienting of attention [14,28,38,39] and visual stimulus detection [5]. Studies investigating patients with damage to bilateral temporo-parietal cortices exhibiting simultanagnosia and functional imaging studies suggested a TPJ involvement in perception of hierarchical global stimuli [2,25,32,48], and objects in demanding viewing conditions [13,58,69,71]. ...
One important role of the TPJ is the contribution to perception of the global gist in hierarchically organized stimuli where individual elements create a global visual percept. However, the link between clinical findings in simultanagnosia and neuroimaging in healthy subjects is missing for real-world global stimuli, like visual scenes. It is well-known that hierarchical, global stimuli activate TPJ regions and that simultanagnosia patients show deficits during the recognition of hierarchical stimuli and real-world visual scenes. However, the role of the TPJ in real-world scene processing is entirely unexplored. In the present study, we first localized TPJ regions significantly responding to the global gist of hierarchical stimuli and then investigated the responses to visual scenes, as well as single objects and faces as control stimuli. All three stimulus classes evoked significantly positive univariate responses in the previously localized TPJ regions. In a multivariate analysis, we were able to demonstrate that voxel patterns of the TPJ were classified significantly above chance level for all three stimulus classes. These results demonstrate a significant involvement of the TPJ in processing of complex visual stimuli that is not restricted to visual scenes and that the TPJ is sensitive to different classes of visual stimuli with a specific signature of neuronal activations.
... Comparing food discounting with money discounting revealed significantly enhanced activity in only one brain region, namely, the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), which is involved in reasoning beliefs of others (Samson et al., 2004;Schurz et al., 2013), social perspective taking (van den Bos et al., 2010), and making sense of another mind (Saxe and Wexler, 2005). In many societies, sharing food is a common practice, and food often serves as a symbol of hospitality and community (Hanna et al., 2023). ...
Most neuroeconomic research seeks to understand how value influences decision-making. The influence of reward type is less well understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate delay discounting of primary (i.e., food) and secondary rewards (i.e., money) in 28 healthy, normal-weighted participants (mean age = 26.77; 18 females). To decipher differences in discounting behavior between reward types, we compared how well-different option-based statistical models (exponential, hyperbolic discounting) and attribute-wise heuristic choice models (intertemporal choice heuristic, dual reasoning and implicit framework theory, trade-off model) captured the reward-specific discounting behavior. Contrary to our hypothesis of different strategies for different rewards, we observed comparable discounting behavior for money and food (i.e., exponential discounting). Higher k values for food discounting suggest that individuals decide more impulsive if confronted with food. The fMRI revealed that money discounting was associated with enhanced activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, involved in executive control; the right dorsal striatum, associated with reward processing; and the left hippocampus, involved in memory encoding/retrieval. Food discounting, instead, was associated with higher activity in the left temporoparietal junction suggesting social reinforcement of food decisions. Although our findings do not confirm our hypothesis of different discounting strategies for different reward types, they are in line with the notion that reward types have a significant influence on impulsivity with primary rewards leading to more impulsive choices.
... Interestingly, the TPJ as part of a neural network involved in mentalizing processes (Koster-Hale & Saxe, 2013;Saxe & Wexler, 2005) appears to be particularly relevant for encoding live and dynamic social interactions from a second-person perspective (Decety & Lamm, 2007;Hoehl et al., 2021;Santiesteban et al., 2015). Notably, increased INS in the TPJ was not evidenced when interaction partners were asked to make explicit predictions about each other but rather emerged in direct interaction and, thus, during ongoing implicit mutual prediction (Kayhan et al., 2022). ...
It is a central tenet of attachment theory that individual differences in attachment representations organize behavior during social interactions. Secure attachment representations also facilitate behavioral synchrony, a key component of adaptive parent–child interactions. Yet, the dynamic neural processes underlying these interactions and the potential role of attachment representations remain largely unknown. A growing body of research indicates that interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) could be a potential neurobiological correlate of high interaction and relationship quality. In this study, we examined whether interpersonal neural and behavioral synchrony during parent–child interaction is associated with parent and child attachment representations. In total, 140 parents (74 mothers and 66 fathers) and their children (age 5–6 years; 60 girls and 80 boys) engaged in cooperative versus individual problem-solving. INS in frontal and temporal regions was assessed with functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning. Attachment representations were ascertained by means of the Adult Attachment Interview in parents and a story-completion task in children, alongside video-coded behavioral synchrony. Findings revealed increased INS during cooperative versus individual problem solving across all dyads (𝛸2(2) = 9.37, p = 0.009). Remarkably, individual differences in attachment representations were associated with INS but not behavioral synchrony (p > 0.159) during cooperation. More specifically, insecure maternal attachment representations were related to higher mother–child INS in frontal regions (𝛸2(3) = 9.18, p = 0.027). Conversely, secure daughter attachment representations were related to higher daughter–parent INS within temporal regions (𝛸2(3) = 12.58, p = 0.006). Our data thus provide further indication for INS as a promising correlate to probe the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment representations in the context of early parent–child interactions.
... It should also be noted that a number of additional meta-features unrelated to speech are recruited to significantly predict activity in the left TPJ for both human and robot interlocutors. In particular, the importance of visual signals (head movements in HHI, facial movements in HRI) highlights a complex combination of different sensory modalities while experimental paradigms that focus on one modality only, for example reading that requires visual processing [49], are usually preferentially associated with right hemisphere responses. It is possible that complex associations of multiple modalities are not correctly captured by classical experimental paradigms focusing on more controlled, and unimodal, aspects of social cognition. ...
We present an analytical framework aimed at predicting the local brain activity in uncontrolled experimental conditions based on multimodal recordings of participants’ behavior, and its application to a corpus of participants having conversations with another human or a conversational humanoid robot. The framework consists in extracting high-level features from the raw behavioral recordings and applying a dynamic prediction of binarized fMRI-recorded local brain activity using these behavioral features. The objective is to identify behavioral features required for this prediction, and their relative weights, depending on the brain area under investigation and the experimental condition. In order to validate our framework, we use a corpus of uncontrolled conversations of participants with a human or a robotic agent, focusing on brain regions involved in speech processing, and more generally in social interactions. The framework not only predicts local brain activity significantly better than random, it also quantifies the weights of behavioral features required for this prediction, depending on the brain area under investigation and on the nature of the conversational partner. In the left Superior Temporal Sulcus, perceived speech is the most important behavioral feature for predicting brain activity, regardless of the agent, while several features, which differ between the human and robot interlocutors, contribute to the prediction in regions involved in social cognition, such as the TemporoParietal Junction. This framework therefore allows us to study how multiple behavioral signals from different modalities are integrated in individual brain regions during complex social interactions.
... These findings suggest that ToM processing is demanding not only in making mental state inferences but also in holding relevant information in mind and/or acting upon it. Neuroscience findings corroborate behavioural findings showing activation of the same brain regions when one processes belief information, regardless of whether inferencing is required 34,35 , suggesting overlapping mechanisms in belief processing both with and without the need for inferences. Distinguishing the three processes in studying ToM activities also offers a way to elucidate the cognitive basis of the separate processes involved in ToM, rendering non-inferential ToM processing a meaningful topic of study. ...
Children are said to understand false belief if they can appreciate an agent’s wrong description of an object as a result of misinformation, and intensionality if they can appreciate and switch between alternative descriptions from different epistemic viewpoints. Most previous studies have investigated the developmental trajectories of these capacities in the age range from 3 to 10 years aiming to discern their conceptual nature. The present research examines whether intensionality incurs lower performance accuracies and longer response times than false belief in adults, using a task in which participants read sentences that explicitly state an agent’s beliefs. Experiment 1 showed that participants were less accurate in rejecting verbal probes that contradicted an agent’s alternative than false thoughts about objects. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this finding using thoughts about object identities but not properties. These results suggest that compared to false belief, intensionality is cognitively demanding for adults to process because of the availability of more than one identity candidate under the agent’s perspective.
... Totally three optode probe sets were used for each participant to cover the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) that has been found to be involved in both memory and shared representations of speech or concepts (Bzdok et al., 2013;Carter et al., 2012;Dai et al., 2018;Saxe and Wexler, 2005;Zadbood et al., 2017). Two sets of probes were placed over the bilateral PFC (see Fig. 1d and e), Calculation for the chance level of mnemonic similarity (4 exemplars for example). ...
Although collaborative remembering is a ubiquitous feature of human beings, its underlying neurocognitive process is not well understood. Here we hypothesized that interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) might underlie collaborative remembering, while real collaboration as opposed to other modes of offline collaboration should enhance INS and facilitate mnemonic similarity. To test these hypotheses, brain activity was measured simultaneously from two individuals who performed a group-based selective retrieval practice task either in a real collaboration or in a pseudo-collaboration, i.e., an individual performed the task together with a pre-recorded audio. The results showed that the memory of two individuals converged to a greater level than the chance level in real collaboration but not in control condition. Moreover, collaborative remembering was associated with significant INS increase in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) relative to the baseline in the real collaboration only. Additionally, INS increase was significantly greater in the real collaboration than in control condition. Finally, the PFC's INS increase was positively correlated with and could accurately predict the level of mnemonic similarity in real collaboration. These findings support the hypothesis that the enhanced INS underlies the cognitive process of collaborative remembering.
... More detailed, during acceptance copying, we found that the TPJ was more strongly activated when participants learned from out-group models' choices, compared to in-group models. In several fMRI studies, the right TPJ has been repeatedly found to be relevant for reasoning about and understanding other persons' mental states, pointing to its outstanding role in ToM processes (Saxe et al., 2004;Saxe and Wexler, 2005). Stronger activation of TPJ under out-group models probably means that participants need to be more effortful to infer why out-group models are interested in the depicted male. ...
Mate copying is a social learning process in which individuals gather public information about potential mates by observing models’ choices. Previous studies have reported that individual attributes of female models affect mate copying, yet little is known about whether and how the group attributes of models influence mate copying. In the current behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, female participants were asked to rate their willingness to choose the depicted males as potential romantic partners before and after observing in-group or out-group female models accepting, rejecting or being undecided (baseline) about the males. Results showed that participants changed their ratings to align with the models’ acceptance or rejection choices. Compared to rejection copying, the effect of acceptance copying was stronger and regulated by in- and out-group models, manifesting a discounting copying effect when learning from out-group models. At the neural level, for acceptance copying, stronger temporoparietal junction (TPJ) activity and connectivity between TPJ and anterior medial prefrontal cortex (amPFC) were observed when female models belonged to out-group members; meanwhile, the functional connection of TPJ and amPFC positively predicted the rating changes when learning from out-group models. The results indicated that participants might need more resources to infer out-group members’ intentions to overcome the in-group bias during acceptance copying.
... Similar to parents' attachment representations, we also found evidence for a significant association between children's attachment representations and parent-child INS, but not behavioral synchrony. Specifically, we observed a significant interaction between The TPJ is part of a neural network involved in mentalizing processes and making inferences about other people's mental states (Koster-Hale & Saxe, 2013;Saxe & Wexler, 2005). More specifically, recent accounts highlight the role of the TPJ as an integration hub for the neural processing of multimodal stimuli, making it particularly relevant for encoding live and dynamic social interactions from a second-person perspective (Decety & Lamm, 2007;Hoehl et al., 2020;Santiesteban et al., 2015). ...
It is a central tenet of attachment theory that individual differences in attachment representations organize behavior during social interactions. Secure attachment representations also facilitate behavioral synchrony, a key component of adaptive parent-child interactions. Yet, the dynamic neural processes underlying these interactions and the potential role of attachment representations remain largely unknown. A growing body of research indicates that interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) could be a potential neurobiological correlate of high interaction and relationship quality. In this study, we examined whether interpersonal neural and behavioral synchrony during parent-child interaction are associated with parent and child attachment representations. In total, 140 parents (74 mothers and 66 fathers) and their offspring (age 5-6 years; 60 girls and 80 boys) engaged in cooperative versus individual problem-solving. INS in frontal and temporal regions was assessed with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. Attachment representations were ascertained by means of the Adult Attachment Interview in parents and a story-completion task in children, alongside video-coded behavioral synchrony. Findings revealed increased INS during cooperative versus individual problem solving across all dyads and topographic differences pertaining to parental biological sex. Remarkably, individual differences in attachment representations coincided with INS within frontal regions among mother-child dyads, but INS within temporal regions among daughter-parent dyads. Attachment representations were not associated with behavioral synchrony. Our data thus provide further indication for INS as a promising correlate to probe the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment representations in the context of early parent-child interactions.
... In addition, similar cortical regions underlying the experience of emotions and sensations are also active when observing others' emotions and sensations (Timmers et al., 2018). Other studies have reported specific brain responses in tasks that require cognitive evaluation, which has been associated with mentalization processes required to understand others (Samson et al., 2004;Saxe and Wexler, 2005). Furthermore, several studies have shown neural strategies for self-other distinction, which is a critical mechanism to distinguish between our experience and that of others (Decety, 2020). ...
Empathy is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that plays a crucial role in human social interactions. Recent developments in social neuroscience have provided valuable insights into the neural underpinnings and bodily mechanisms underlying empathy. This methodology often prioritizes precision, replicability, internal validity, and confound control. However, fully understanding the complexity of empathy seems unattainable by solely relying on artificial and controlled laboratory settings, while overlooking a comprehensive view of empathy through an ecological experimental approach. In this article, we propose articulating an integrative theoretical and methodological framework based on the 5E approach (the “E”s stand for embodied, embedded, enacted, emotional, and extended perspectives of empathy), highlighting the relevance of studying empathy as an active interaction between embodied agents, embedded in a shared real-world environment. In addition, we illustrate how a novel multimodal approach including mobile brain and body imaging (MoBi) combined with phenomenological methods, and the implementation of interactive paradigms in a natural context, are adequate procedures to study empathy from the 5E approach. In doing so, we present the Empirical 5E approach (E5E) as an integrative scientific framework to bridge brain/body and phenomenological attributes in an interbody interactive setting. Progressing toward an E5E approach can be crucial to understanding empathy in accordance with the complexity of how it is experienced in the real world.
... During film viewing, we effortlessly recognise and follow the mental states of onscreen characters, a process 83 associated with theory-of-mind function (Abell et al., 2000;Castelli et al., 2000;Saxe & Wexler, 2005). ...
The neuroscientific examination of music processing in audiovisual contexts offers a valuable framework to assess how auditory information influences the emotional processing of visual information. Using fMRI during naturalistic film viewing, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying music’s effect on valence inferences during mental state attribution. Participants (n=38) watched a short-film accompanied by systemically controlled music, varying in tonal consonance/dissonance level. Increasing levels of dissonance induced more negatively-valenced inferences. Whole-brain analysis revealed significant signal changes in the primary visual cortex (V1) whilst participants watched the film with dissonant music. Psychophysiological interaction analysis (PPI) showed strong coupling between the auditory ventral stream (right middle posterior temporal gyrus; rmPTG) and V1 in response to dissonance. Effective connectivity analysis demonstrated that musical dissonance modulated visual processing via top-down feedback inputs from the rmPTG to V1. These V1 signal changes indicate the influence of high-level contextual representations associated with tonal dissonance on early visual cortices, serving to facilitate the emotional interpretation of visual information. The findings substantiate the critical role of audio-visual integration in shaping higher-order functions such as social cognition.
Significance statement
The present study shows that musical dissonance affects the interaction between the auditory ventral pathway and the primary visual cortex (V1), extending V1’s role beyond visual perception. These findings suggest that the auditory ventral stream plays a role in assigning meaning to non-verbal sound cues, such as dissonant music conveying negative emotions, providing an interpretative framework that serves to organize the audio-visual experience.
Data sharing. All relevant data are available from the figshare database DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.21345240
... The pathway associated with the human entorhinal cortex is linked with another subdivision of the default network, labelled as default network B 53,54 . This subdivision has been shown to be specifically engaged during social processing that involves imagining perspective of other agents 55,[84][85][86] . The pathway associated with the human perirhinal cortex is linked the subdivision A of the dorsal attention network 69,87,88 that is typically engaged during visuospatial externally oriented tasks. ...
Tract-tracing studies in primates indicate that different subregions of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) are connected with multiple brain regions. However, no clear framework defining the distributed anatomy associated with the human MTL exists. This gap in knowledge originates in notoriously low MRI data quality in the anterior human MTL and in group-level blurring of idiosyncratic anatomy between adjacent brain regions, such as entorhinal and perirhinal cortices, and parahippocampal areas TH/TF. Using MRI, we intensively scanned four human individuals and collected whole-brain data with unprecedented MTL signal quality. Following detailed exploration of cortical networks associated with MTL subregions within each individual, we discovered three biologically meaningful networks associated with the entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex, and parahippocampal area TH, respectively. Our findings define the anatomical constraints within which human mnemonic functions must operate and are insightful for examining the evolutionary trajectory of the MTL connectivity across species.
... So far, only one study attempted to address the issue of causality of the ToM-supporting rTPJ region in processing indirectness (Feng et al., 2021). They directed transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), which, as mentioned above, is important for ToM processing (Saxe and Wexler, 2005;Schurz et al., 2014). They subsequently observed alterations in the performance in an indirect SA comprehension task and an alteration of performance in a ToM task. ...
In communication, much information is conveyed not explicitly but rather covertly, based on shared assumptions and common knowledge. For instance, when asked "Did you bring your cat to the vet?" a person could reply "It got hurt jumping down the table", thereby implicating that, indeed, the cat was brought to the vet. The assumption that getting hurt jumping down a table motivates a vet visit is tacitly attributed to the speaker by the listener, which might engage Theory of Mind (ToM) processes. In the present study, we apply repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), a key brain region underlying ToM, with the aim to disrupt ToM processes necessary for language understanding. We then assess effects on the comprehension of indirect speech acts and their matched direct controls. In one set of conditions, the direct and indirect stimuli where not matched for speech act type, whereas, in the others, these were matched, therefore providing an unconfounded test case for in/directness. When indirect speech acts and direct controls were matched for speech act type (both descriptive answers), the indirect took longer to process both following sham and verum TMS. However, when the indirect and direct speech act were not matched for communicative function (accept/decline offer vs. descriptive answer respectively), then a delay was detected for the indirect ones following sham TMS but, crucially, not following verum TMS. Additionally, TMS affected behavior in a ToM task. We therefore do not find evidence that the rTPJ is causally involved in comprehending of indirectness per se, but conclude that it could be involved instead in the processing of specific social communicative activity of rejecting of accepting offers, or to a combination of differing in/directness and communicative function. Our findings are consistent with the view that ToM processing in rTPJ is more important and/or more pronounced for offer acceptance/rejection than for descriptive answers.
... When people with different backgrounds and languages need to communicate, DI provides a face-to-face method of helping people transmit knowledge across linguistic boundaries (Nussbaum, 2014 The bilateral TPJ is widely known as being associated with ToM, the cognitive ability to predict others' mental state on the basis of various cues (Schurz et al., 2017). Some researchers have found significant brain activity in the left and/or right TPJ during ToM-related tasks by fMRI (Saxe and Wexler, 2005;Boccadoro et al., 2019) and fNIRS (Bowman et al., 2015;Zheng et al., 2018). ...
In everyday face-to-face communication, speakers use speech to transfer information and rely on co-occurring nonverbal cues, such as hand and facial gestures. The integration of speech and gestures facilitates both language comprehension and the skill of theory of mind. Consecutive dialogue interpreting (DI) allows dyads of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each another. The interpreter interprets after the interlocutor has finished a turn, so the interlocutor watches the gesture first and hears the target language a few seconds later, resulting in speech-gesture asynchrony. In this study, we used the functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning technique to investigate the influence of speech-gesture asynchrony on different levels of communication. Twenty groups were recruited for the DI experiments. The results showed that when the interpreter performed consecutive interpreting, the time-lagged neural coupling at the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) decreased compared to simultaneous interpreting. It suggests that speech-gesture asynchrony significantly weakened the ability of interlocutors to understand each other's mental state, and the decreased neural coupling was significantly correlated with the interpreter's interpretation skill. In addition, the time-aligned neural coupling at the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) increased, which suggests that, as compensation, the interlocutor's verbal working memory increases in line with the communication process.
... In the experience of compassion, the anterior insular cortex -aIC (which explains the intense visceral response) [105][106][107] and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex -dlPFC (involved in emotional self-regulation processes) [108] are active, the latter being considered by some authors as a moderator of compassion [109]. In addition to these, the experience of compassion activates median cortical structures (midline cortex) -involved in self-referential and evaluative social thinking processes [110], but also the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) -an important region in the processes of acquiring the other's perspective [111], the latter being considered a key structure in the experience of compassion. For example, one study found that more generous individuals who currently participate in charitable activities display this distinct neurobiological profile, having a higher density of nerve cells in the TPJ [112]. ...
The incidence of the fatigue caused by medical care brings to attention the emotional reactions to suffering and theirpossible effects on caregivers. In this study, we shall discuss empathy and compassion. Linguistic analyses and psycholog-ical evaluations fail to differentiate between empathy and compassion. We shall therefore make an inventory of thecontribution of neuroscientific studies that we consider important.We shall present some research and clinical studies that support the discrimination between compassion and empathy, at the psycho-behavioural level, in terms of vagal and cerebral patterns and in terms of the effects that these emotional states have at the psycho-emotional level. Unlike the interventions aimed at empathic training, cultivating compassion among caregivers produces beneficial effects, decreasing fatigue and increasing resilience.We believe that the differences found between compassion and empathy support the replacement of the phrase “com-passion fatigue”, widely used today, with “empathic distress”.We consider the prophylactic and therapeutic capitalisation of compassion in health care, by developing training pro-grams to cultivate compassion for specialised staff for patients, to avoid fatigue (empathic distress) and to improve the emotional, humanistic dimension of the doctor-patient relationship, both urgent and necessary.
... The mPFC has been suggested to be a part of a social-cognition network including the temporo-parietal junction, superior temporal sulcus and amygdala, which supports core aspects of person construal [37,[40][41][42]. Neuroimaging evidence indicate that making social judgments about people such as impression formation of a person (e.g., [43,44]), interpersonal affect (e.g., [45,46]) and theory of mind (e.g., [47][48][49]) have been associated with observations of differential mPFC activation. The mPFC has also been suggested to play a prominent role in stereotyping. ...
Sexism is a widespread form of gender discrimination which includes remarks based on gender stereotypes. However, little is known about the neural basis underlying the experience of sexist-related comments and how perceptions of sexism are related to these neural processes. The present study investigated whether perceptions of sexism influence neural processing of receiving sexist-related comments. Participants (N = 67) read experimental vignettes describing scenarios of comments involving gender stereotypes while near-infrared spectroscopy recordings were made to measure the hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex. Results found a significant correlation between participants’ perceptions of sexism and brain activation in a brain cluster including the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. There was a significant gender difference where female participants showed a stronger negative correlation compared to male participants. Future research can expand on these initial findings by looking at subcortical structures involved in emotional processing and gender stereotype application as well as examining cultural differences in perceptions of gender stereotypes and sexism.
... The ToM module handles belief inference and the translation of these beliefs into predictions, both of which can be exported to other regions of the brain for various purposes. Unlike vision or audition researchers, however, modular theorists offer inconclusive evidence for where in the brain the module exists and about the algorithmic way in which perceptual information about behaviors is processed (Saxe and Wexler 2005). ...
Human social interaction hinges on the ability to interpret and predict the actions of others. The most valuable explanatory variable of these actions, more important than environmental or social factors, is the one that we do not have direct access to: the mind. This lack of access leaves us to impute the mental states—beliefs, desires, emotions, intentions, etc.—of others before we can explain their behaviors. Studying our ability to do so, our Theory of Mind, has long been the province of psychologists and philosophers. Computational scientists are increasingly joining this research space as they strive to imbue artificial intelligences with human-like characteristics. We provide a high-level review of Theory of Mind research across several domains, with the goal of mapping between theory and recursive agent models. We illustrate this mapping using a specific recursive agent architecture, PsychSim, and discuss how it addresses many of the open issues in Theory of Mind research by enforcing a set of minimal requirements.
... Sulla base di tali ipotesi, alcune sperimentazioni relative ad attività cognitive concernenti la falsa credenza hanno portato ad identificare le aree cerebrali del solco temporale superiore e della ginzione temporo-parietale come le principali aree responsabili dei processi di mentalizzazione, ipotizzando l' esistenza di un substrato neurale altamente specializzato per la computazione di tali informazioni e l' esistenza di moduli cerebrali relativamente autonomi e specializzati per lo svolgimento di tali funzioni cognitive (Saxe, 2005(Saxe, , 2006Saxe, Carey & Kaniwhser, 2004;Saxe & Wexler, 2005). ...
... Researchers have begun doing so by modulating underlying neural activity in three ways: (1) shifting attention, (2) fostering intergroup relationships with other-race individuals, and (3) increasing interaction with other-race individuals. In a study asking individuals to pay attention to the painful feelings of other-race individuals, researchers found increased activity in the ACC, SMA, AI, and TPJ [89], regions related to empathy [91]. These fundings suggest that cognitive interventions aimed at understanding others' perspectives may reduce racial ingroup bias in empathy and thus alter bias related to pain treatment. ...
Purpose of Review
This review synthesizes recent findings related to the biopsychosocial processes that underlie racial disparities in chronic pain, while highlighting opportunities for interventions to reduce disparities in pain treatment among BIPOC.
Recent Findings
Chronic pain is a prevalent and costly public health concern that disproportionately burdens Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). This unequal burden arises from an interplay among biological, psychological, and social factors.
Summary
Social determinants of health (e.g., income, education level, and lack of access or inability to utilize healthcare services) are known to affect overall health, including chronic pain, and disproportionately affect BIPOC communities. This burden is exacerbated by exposure to psychosocial stressors (i.e., perceived injustice, discrimination, and race-based traumatic stress) and can affect biological systems that modulate pain (i.e., inflammation and pain epigenetics). Further, there are racial/ethnic disparities in pain treatment, perpetuating the cycle of undermanaged chronic pain among BIPOC.
... For instance, when interacting with others in a strategic game 41,42 or in group decision making where coordination or trust was needed 43,44 , participants developed internal models about how others decide using the mentalizing network 45 , which involves the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). These regions are associated with the ability to infer others' agency and mental states 42,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] , and also to make decisions on behalf of others 42,[57][58][59] . Here, we conjecture that participants adjust their estimations during interaction by anchoring their views on the partner's views via perspective taking. ...
In the digital era, new socially shared realities and norms emerge rapidly, whether they are beneficial or harmful to our societies. Although these are emerging properties from dynamic interaction, most research has centered on static situations where isolated individuals face extant norms. We investigated how perceptual norms emerge endogenously as shared realities through interaction, using behavioral and fMRI experiments coupled with computational modeling. Social interactions fostered convergence of perceptual responses among people, not only overtly but also at the covert psychophysical level that generates overt responses. Reciprocity played a critical role in increasing the stability (reliability) of the psychophysical function within each individual, modulated by neural activity in the mentalizing network during interaction. These results imply that bilateral influence promotes mutual cognitive anchoring of individual views, producing shared generative models at the collective level that enable endogenous agreement on totally new targets–one of the key functions of social norms.
... In this study, higher activation was found in the mPFC of Black participants when viewing Black victims of a hurricane than when viewing Caucasian victims. Several additional studies showed greater activations in the TPJ when participants viewed photos of ingroup members experiencing emotional pain as compared to outgroup members [124][125][126]. In an attempt to shed some light on the causal role the TPJ plays in behaviors toward ingroup and outgroup members, a TMS study found that inhibitory low-frequency repetitive TMS (rTMS) applied to the right TPJ, but not to the left TPJ, diminished the effect of group membership on the decision to punish. ...
Conflicts between groups are difficult to resolve, partly because humans tend to be biased in judging outgroup members. The aim of the current article is to review findings on the link between creativity and conflict-related biases and to offer a model that views creative cognition as an ability that may contribute to overcoming conflict-related biases. Our proposed model conforms to the twofold model of creativity. According to this model, creativity involves a generation phase and an evaluation phase, and these phases correspond to the neural mechanisms that underlie conflict-related biases. Specifically, we contend that the generation phase of creativity affects conflict-related biases by exerting an influence on stereotypes and prejudice, outgroup-targeted emotions, and ingroup empathy biases, all of which rely on the default mode network. Conversely, the evaluation phase of creativity, which is usually associated with activation in the executive control network and action-observation system, may be related to herding behaviors. Building on the shared mechanisms of creativity and conflicts, we propose that studies examining creativity-based interventions may be effective in promoting reconciliation.
... Beyond the prefrontal cortex, which was targeted in 15 studies, and the FEF which was targeted in four studies, other targeted areas included the right temporal parietal junction (TPJ) which was targeted in three studies and the inferior frontal gyrus, which was targeted in one study. The rTPJ has been implicated in a variety of processes, including contributing to implicit Theory of Mind, social cognition, and emotional processing of faces for those with autism (Saxe and Wexler 2005). Among the studies that targeted this area, two studies yielded supporting evidence for this brain region's role in ToM and emotional processing. ...
The last decades have seen a rise in the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) approaches to modulate brain activity and associated behavior. Concurrently, eye tracking (ET) technology has improved to allow more precise quantitative measurement of gaze behavior, offering a window into the mechanisms of vision and cognition. When combined, tDCS and ET provide a powerful system to probe brain function and measure the impact on visual function, leading to an increasing number of studies that utilize these techniques together. The current pre-registered, systematic review seeks to describe the literature that integrates these approaches with the goal of changing brain activity with tDCS and measuring associated changes in eye movements with ET. The literature search identified 26 articles that combined ET and tDCS in a probe-and-measure model and are systematically reviewed here. All studies implemented controlled interventional designs to address topics related to oculomotor control, cognitive processing, emotion regulation, or cravings in healthy volunteers and patient populations. Across these studies, active stimulation typically led to changes in the number, duration, and timing of fixations compared to control stimulation. Notably, half the studies addressed emotion regulation, each showing hypothesized effects of tDCS on ET metrics, while tDCS targeting the frontal cortex was widely used and also generally produced expected modulation of ET. This review reveals promising evidence of the impact of tDCS on eye movements and associated psychological function, offering a framework for effective designs with recommendations for future studies.
... By contrast, tasks that assess mentalizing involve asking participants to specifically take the perspective of an observer or answer questions about what another person believes about a situation. These studies show that mentalizing is subserved by a network of brain regions that allow people to construct mental models and "project" themselves into other times, places, and perspectives (Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005;Saxe & Wexler, 2005). These regions include the medial PFC, temporoparietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), precuneus, and temporal poles. ...
The sixth edition of the foundational reference on cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that covers the latest research, experimental approaches, and measurement methodologies. Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The sixth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition—the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field, covering the latest research, experimental approaches, and measurement methodologies.
This sixth edition treats such foundational topics as memory, attention, and language, as well as other areas, including computational models of cognition, reward and decision making, social neuroscience, scientific ethics, and methods advances. Over the last twenty-five years, the cognitive neurosciences have seen the development of sophisticated tools and methods, including computational approaches that generate enormous data sets. This volume deploys these exciting new instruments but also emphasizes the value of theory, behavior, observation, and other time-tested scientific habits.
Section editorsSarah-Jayne Blakemore and Ulman Lindenberger, Kalanit Grill-Spector and Maria Chait, Tomás Ryan and Charan Ranganath, Sabine Kastner and Steven Luck, Stanislas Dehaene and Josh McDermott, Rich Ivry and John Krakauer, Daphna Shohamy and Wolfram Schultz, Danielle Bassett and Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Marina Bedny and Alfonso Caramazza, Liina Pylkkänen and Karen Emmorey, Mauricio Delgado and Elizabeth Phelps, Anjan Chatterjee and Adina Roskies
Perspective taking (PT) is the ability to imagine viewpoints different from our own. However, the nature of PT as a construct, and its underlying cognitive mechanisms, are not well established. Some researchers propose that understanding what others believe (cognitive PT), feel (affective PT), and see (spatial PT) form a single behavioral dimension, relying on the orienting of attention between competing frame-of-reference representations. Others propose that PT mechanisms are dissociable, although there are three different proposals about such dissociations. The present study examined behavioral associations among measures of spatial, cognitive, and affective PT and attentional control in neurotypical young adults. There was a lack of convergent validity for measures of cognitive and affective PT, pointing to the need for more psychometric work on these dimensions. Much better convergence was found for spatial PT measures. There was little to no behavioral association between spatial PT and either social forms of PT (cognitive or affective) or attentional control measures. This pattern suggests support for a dissociated model in which spatial PT is a distinct cognitive construct.
Humanoid robots have been designed to look more and more like humans to meet social demands. How do people empathize humanoid robots who look the same as but are essentially different from humans? We addressed this issue by examining subjective feelings, electrophysiological activities, and functional magnetic resonance imaging signals during perception of pain and neutral expressions of faces that were recognized as patients or humanoid robots. We found that healthy adults reported deceased feelings of understanding and sharing of humanoid robots’ compared to patients’ pain. Moreover, humanoid robot (vs. patient) identities reduced long-latency electrophysiological responses and blood oxygenation level–dependent signals in the left temporoparietal junction in response to pain (vs. neutral) expressions. Furthermore, we showed evidence that humanoid robot identities inhibited a causal input from the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex to the left temporoparietal junction, contrasting the opposite effect produced by patient identities. These results suggest a neural model of modulations of empathy by humanoid robot identity through interactions between the cognitive and affective empathy networks, which provides a neurocognitive basis for understanding human–robot interactions.
Key unanswered questions for cognitive neuroscience include whether social cognition is underpinned by specialised brain regions and to what extent it simultaneously depends on more domain-general systems. Until we glean a better understanding of the full set of contributions made by various systems, theories of social cognition will remain fundamentally limited. In the present study, we evaluate a recent proposal that semantic cognition plays a crucial role in supporting social cognition. While previous brain-based investigations have focused on dissociating these two systems, our primary aim was to assess the degree to which the neural correlates are overlapping, particularly within two key regions, the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). We focus on activation associated with theory of mind (ToM) and adopt a meta-analytic activation likelihood approach to synthesise a large set of functional neuroimaging studies and compare their results with studies of semantic cognition. As a key consideration, we sought to account for methodological differences across the two sets of studies, including the fact that ToM studies tend to use nonverbal stimuli while the semantics literature is dominated by language-based tasks. Overall, we observed consistent overlap between the two sets of brain regions, especially in the ATL and TPJ. This supports the claim that tasks involving ToM draw upon more general semantic retrieval processes. We also identified activation specific to ToM in the right TPJ, bilateral anterior mPFC, and right precuneus. This is consistent with the view that, nested amongst more domain-general systems, there is specialised circuitry that is tuned to social processes.
In competitive interactions, humans have to flexibly update their beliefs about another person's intentions in order to adjust their own choice strategy, such as when believing that the other may exploit their cooperativeness. Here we investigate both the neural dynamics and the causal neural substrate of belief updating processes in humans. We used an adapted prisoner's dilemma game in which participants explicitly predicted the coplayer's actions, which allowed us to quantify the prediction error between expected and actual behavior. First, in an EEG experiment, we found a stronger medial frontal negativity (MFN) for negative than positive prediction errors, suggesting that this medial frontal ERP component may encode unexpected defection of the coplayer. The MFN also predicted subsequent belief updating after negative prediction errors. In a second experiment, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate whether the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) causally implements belief updating after unexpected outcomes. Our results show that dmPFC TMS impaired belief updating and strategic behavioral adjustments after negative prediction errors. Taken together, our findings reveal the time course of the use of prediction errors in social decisions and suggest that the dmPFC plays a crucial role in updating mental representations of others' intentions.
Social norms are pivotal in guiding social interactions. The current study investigated the potential contribution of the posterior cerebellum, a critical region involved in perceiving and comprehending the sequential dynamics of social actions, in detecting actions that either conform to or deviate from social norms. Participants engaged in a goal-directed task in which they observed others navigating towards a goal. The trajectories demonstrated either norm-violating (trespassing forbidden zones) or norm-following behaviors (avoiding forbidden zones). Results revealed that observing social norm-violating behaviors engaged the bilateral posterior cerebellar Crus 2 and the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) from the mentalizing network, and the parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) to a greater extent than observing norm-following behaviors. These mentalizing regions were also activated when comparing social sequences against non-social and non-sequential control conditions. Reproducing norm-violating social trajectories observed earlier, activated the left cerebellar Crus 2 and the right PHG compared to reproducing norm-following trajectories. These findings illuminate the neural mechanisms in the cerebellum associated with detecting norm transgressions during social navigation, emphasizing the role of the posterior cerebellum in detecting and signaling deviations from anticipated sequences.
The article examines the modern discourse on the problem of consciousness in the context of theories about the biological and physical basis of consciousness. In order to consider problematic issues of consciousness, two theoretical approaches to consciousness are analyzed: Michael Graziano's attention schema theory and Bernard Baars' global workspace theory. By describing the key characteristics of each approach, it is determined what aspects of consciousness they propose to explain, what their neurobiological commitments are, and what empirical evidence is cited to support them. Researching the theories of Michael Graziano and Bernard Baars helps in understanding how the brain creates conscious experience, which is key to progress in the field of cognitive science and neuroscience. Understanding the nature of consciousness is important for philosophical and ethical discussions related to questions of responsibility, self-awareness, and other aspects of social existence. The research also promotes interaction between different fields of science, such as neurobiology, psychology, philosophy and computer science, which creates an integrated approach to the study of consciousness. When writing this article, the following methods were used: discourse analysis, in order to obtain substantiated information about the theories of consciousness of Michael Graziano and Bernard Baars, about various aspects of theories of consciousness, their main principles and interaction with other theories. Comparativist approach: a comparative analysis of the theories of Michael Graziano and Bernard Baars was carried out, highlighting their common and distinctive features. Comprehensive approach: a wide range of knowledge and information was used to write the article in order to provide a complete and objective overview of theories of consciousness.
Children with autism often have difficulty with Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to infer mental states, and pragmatic skills, the contextual use of language. Neuroimaging research suggests ToM and pragmatic skills overlap, as the ability to understand another's mental state is a prerequisite to interpersonal communication. To our knowledge, no study in the last decade has examined this overlap further. To assess the emerging consensus across neuroimaging studies of ToM and pragmatic skills in autism, we used coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis of 35 functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies (13 pragmatic skills, 22 ToM), resulting in a meta-analysis of 1,295 participants (647 autistic, 648 non-autistic) aged 7 to 49 years. Group difference analysis revealed decreased left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) activation in autistic participants during pragmatic skills tasks. For ToM tasks, we found reduced anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) activation in autistic participants. Collectively, both ToM and pragmatic tasks showed activation in IFG and superior temporal gyrus (STG) and a reduction in left hemispheric activation in autistic participants. Overall, the findings underscore the cognitive and neural processing similarities between ToM and pragmatic skills, and their underlying neurobiological differences in autism.
Key unanswered questions for cognitive neuroscience include whether social cognition is underpinned by specialised brain regions, and to what extent it simultaneously depends on more domain-general systems. Until we glean a better understanding of the contribution made by domain-general cognitive systems, theories of social cognition will remain fundamentally limited. In the present study, we evaluate a recent and novel proposal that the semantic cognition network plays a crucial role in supporting social processes. We specifically focus on theory of mind (ToM) abilities and adopt a meta-analytic activation likelihood estimation approach to synthesise the results of a large set of functional neuroimaging studies. Our primary aim was to establish the degree of topological overlap between the cortical networks involved in ToM and semantic tasks. Moreover, we sought to account for key methodological differences across the two sets of tasks, including the fact that ToM studies tend to use nonverbal stimuli while the semantics literature is dominated by language-based tasks. We observed extensive overlap between the two networks in regions strongly implicated in semantic cognition, including the anterior temporal lobes and the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Activation specific to ToM was identified in the right TPJ, bilateral anterior mPFC, and right precuneus. These findings persisted even after controlling for discrepancies in the types of experimental stimuli used in each domain. Overall, the findings support the claim that ToM draws upon more general semantic retrieval processes and are against the view that ToM is underpinned solely by a domain-specific social neurocognitive system.
Is there a way improve our ability to understand the minds of others? Towards addressing this question, here, we conducted a single-arm, proof-of-concept study to evaluate whether real-time fMRI neurofeedback (rtfMRI-NF) from the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) leads to volitional control of the neural network subserving theory of mind (ToM; the process by which we attribute and reason about the mental states of others). As additional aims, we evaluated the strategies used to self-regulate the network and whether volitional control of the ToM network was moderated by participant characteristics and associated with improved performance on behavioral measures. Sixteen participants underwent fMRI while completing a task designed to individually-localize the TPJ, and then three separate rtfMRI-NF scans during which they completed multiple runs of a training task while receiving intermittent, activation-based feedback from the TPJ, and one run of a transfer task in which no neurofeedback was provided. Region-of-interest analyses demonstrated volitional control in most regions during the training tasks and during the transfer task, although the effects were smaller in magnitude and not observed in one of the neurofeedback targets for the transfer task. Text analysis demonstrated that volitional control was most strongly associated with thinking about prior social experiences when up-regulating the neural signal. Analysis of behavioral performance and brain-behavior associations largely did not reveal behavior changes except for a positive association between volitional control in RTPJ and changes in performance on one ToM task. Exploratory analysis suggested neurofeedback-related learning occurred, although some degree of volitional control appeared to be conferred with the initial self-regulation strategy provided to participants (i.e., without the neurofeedback signal). Critical study limitations include the lack of a control group and pre-rtfMRI transfer scan, which prevents a more direct assessment of neurofeedback-induced volitional control, and a small sample size, which may have led to an overestimate and/or unreliable estimate of study effects. Nonetheless, together, this study demonstrates the feasibility of training volitional control of a social cognitive brain network, which may have important clinical applications. Given the study's limitations, findings from this study should be replicated with more robust experimental designs.
Contests, as economic, political, and social interactions, can stimulate high levels of effort, but they can also lead to inefficient expenditure of effort (overbidding), resulting in the wastage of social resources. Prior studies have indicated that the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is associated with overbidding and speculating on the intentions of others during contests. This study aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms of the TPJ in overbidding and to examine changes in bidding behavior after modulating TPJ activity using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The experiment randomly allocated participants into three groups, each receiving either anodal stimulation of the LTPJ/RTPJ or sham stimulation. Following the stimulation, the participants engaged in the Tullock rent-seeking game. Our results revealed that participants who received anodal stimulation of the LTPJ and RTPJ significantly reduced their bids compared to the sham group, possibly due to enhanced accuracy in guessing others' strategies or enhanced altruistic preferences. Moreover, our findings suggest that while both the LTPJ and RTPJ are associated with overbidding behavior, anodal tDCS targeting the RTPJ is more effective than stimulation of the LTPJ in decreasing overbidding. The aforementioned revelations offer proof of the neural mechanisms of the TPJ in overbidding and provide fresh substantiation for the neural mechanisms of social behavior.
Recent research in social neuroscience has postulated that Theory of Mind (ToM) regions play a role in processing social prediction error (PE: the difference between what was expected and what was observed). Here, we tested whether PE signal depends on the type of prior information people use to make predictions-an agent's prior mental states (e.g. beliefs, desires, preferences) or an agent's prior behavior-as well as the type of information that confirms or violates such predictions. That is, does prior information about mental states (versus behavior) afford stronger predictions about an agent's subsequent mental states or behaviors? Additionally, when information about an agent's prior mental states or behavior is available, is PE signal strongest when information about an agent's subsequent mental state (vs behavior) is revealed? In line with prior research, results suggest that DMPFC, LTPJ, and RTPJ are recruited more for unexpected than expected outcomes. However, PE signal does not seem to discriminate on the basis of prior or outcome information type. These findings suggest that ToM regions may flexibly incorporate any available information to make predictions about, monitor, and perhaps explain, inconsistencies in social agents.
Predicting and inferring what other people think and feel (mentalizing) is central to social interaction. Since the discovery of the brain's "mentalizing network", fMRI studies have probed the lines along which the activity of different regions in this network converges and dissociates. Here, we use fMRI meta-analysis to aggregate across the stimuli, paradigms, and contrasts from past studies in order to definitively test two sources of possible sensitivity among brain regions of this network with particular theoretical relevance. First, it has been proposed that mentalizing processes depend on aspects of target identity (whose mind is considered), with self-projection or simulation strategies engaging disproportionately for psychologically close targets. Second, it has been proposed that mentalizing processes depend on content type (what the inference is), with inferences about epistemic mental states (e.g. beliefs and knowledge) engaging different processes than mentalizing about other types of content (e.g. emotions or preferences). Overall, evidence supports the conclusion that different mentalizing regions are sensitive to target identity and content type, respectively, but with some points of divergence from previous claims. Results point to fruitful directions for future studies, with implications for theories of mentalizing.
Language and social cognition are traditionally studied as separate cognitive domains, yet accumulative studies reveal overlapping neural correlates at the left ventral temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL), which have been attributed to sentence processing and social concept activation. We propose a common cognitive component underlying both effects -- social-semantic working memory. We confirmed two key predictions of our hypothesis using fMRI: First, the left vTPJ and lATL showed sensitivity to sentences only when the sentences conveyed social meaning.; second, these regions showed persistent social-semantic-selective activity after the linguistic stimuli disappeared. We additionally found that both regions were sensitive to the socialness of nonlinguistic stimuli and were more tightly connected with the social-semantic-processing areas than with the sentence-processing areas. The converging evidence indicates the social-semantic-working-memory function of the left vTPJ and lATL and challenges the general-semantic and/or syntactic accounts for the neural activity of these regions.
Inferring others' mental states, or mentalizing, is a critical social cognitive ability that underlies humans' remarkable capacity for complex social interactions. Recent work suggests that interracial contact shapes the recruitment of brain regions involved in mentalizing during impression formation. However, it remains unclear how a target's perceived racial group and a perceiver's previous contact with that racial group shapes mental state inferences. In this study, we examined brain activity in regions of interest associated with mentalizing and race perception among self-identified White perceivers who varied in lifetime contact while they inferred secondary emotions from perceived White eyes and perceived Black eyes (i.e., the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test). The interaction between lifetime contact and perceived target race predicted activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), a region consistently implicated in mental state inferences from perceptual cues, tracking eye gaze, and biological motion. Low and average contact White perceivers showed more left STS activity when inferring mental states from perceived White eyes than perceived Black eyes, whereas high contact White perceivers showed similar left STS activity regardless of perceived target race. These results indicate that interracial contact decreases racial biases in the recruitment of regions involved in mentalizing when inferring mental states from perceptual cues.
Bribe-taking decision is a social dilemma for individuals: the pursuit of economic self-interest vs. compliance with social norms. Despite the well-known existence of the conflict in deciding whether to accept bribes, little is known about its neural responses. Using functional near-infrared imaging (fNIRS) technology and the bribe-taking decision game (economic gambling game as a control condition), the current study dissociated the neural correlates of the different motivations in the bribery dilemma, as well as the inhibitory effect of social norms on bribery and its underlying brain mechanisms in supra-cortical regions. Findings revealed that if individuals are more motivated by economic interest, rejecting money (vs. accepting money) accompanies higher activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and frontopolar cortex (FPC), which reflects impulse inhibition and decision evaluation; whereas, if individuals are more consider social norms, their DLPFC is more active when they accept bribes (vs. reject bribes), which reflects their fear of punishment. Additionally, the key brain region where social norms inhibit bribery involves the left DLPFC. The current findings contribute to the literature on the neural manifestations of corrupt decisions and provide some insights into the anti-corruption movement.
Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to represent the mental states of oneself and others, is argued to be central to human social experience, and impairments in this ability are thought to underlie several psychiatric and developmental conditions. To examine the accuracy of mental state inferences, a novel ToM task was developed, requiring inferences to be made about the mental states of 'Targets', prior participants who took part in a videoed mock interview. Participants also made estimates of the Targets' personality traits. These inferences were compared to ground-truth data, provided by the Targets, of their true traits and mental states. Results from 55 adult participants demonstrated that trait inferences were used to derive mental state inferences, and that the accuracy of trait estimates predicted the accuracy of mental state inferences. Moreover, the size and direction of the association between trait accuracy and mental state accuracy varied according to the trait-mental state combination. The accuracy of trait inferences was predicted by the accuracy of participants' understanding of trait covariation at the population level. Findings are in accordance with the Mind-space theory, that representation of the Target mind is used in the inference of their mental states.
Objects are the core meaningful elements in our visual environment. Classic theories of object vision focus upon object recognition and are elegant and simple. Some of their proposals still stand, yet the simplicity is gone. Recent evolutions in behavioral paradigms, neuroscientific methods, and computational modeling have allowed vision scientists to uncover the complexity of the multidimensional representational space that underlies object vision. We review these findings and propose that the key to understanding this complexity is to relate object vision to the full repertoire of behavioral goals that underlie human behavior, running far beyond object recognition. There might be no such thing as core object recognition, and if it exists, then its importance is more limited than traditionally thought.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 74 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
This article analyzes the similarities and differences in forming impressions of individuals and in developing conceptions of groups. In both cases, the perceiver develops a mental conception of the target (individual or group) on the basis of available information and uses that information to make judgments about that person or group. However, a review of existing evidence reveals differences in the outcomes of impressions formed of individual and group targets, even when those impressions are based on the very same behavioral information. A model is proposed to account for these differences. The model emphasizes the role of differing expectancies of unity and coherence in individual and group targets, which in turn engage different mechanisms for processing information and making judgments. Implications of the model are discussed.
Introduction. Theory of mind (ToM) deficits have recently been associated with executive dysfunction and frontal brain damage. This case study investigated ToM ability and its relation to executive functioning and the role of the frontal cortex, in an adult male with orbitofrontal (OF) damage and disturbance in social behaviour. It was hypothesised that both ToM ability and executive functioning would be impaired. It has also been suggested that ability to understand affective states may be mediated by OF structures. Understanding of affective state attribution was also investigated. Methods. A 59-year-old male Caucasian with social disturbance and OF damage was administered a battery of neuropsychological tests, tests of executive function, plus ToM stories and cartoons, in order to assess the ability to infer mental and affective states in others. Results. Ability to understand mental states and affective responses was found to be intact and independent of executive functioning. Conclusion. ToM ability appears to be independent of executive skills of overall strategy formation and not necessarily dependent on OF involvement. It is concluded that evidence supports the modular hypothesis of ToM and that this ability may be supported by more posterior regions.
An experiment with 182 undergraduates investigated the effect of chronic category accessibility on impression formation and recall under information overload and nonoverload conditions. Ss read about a person who behaved mainly honestly but sometimes dishonestly or about a mainly dishonest person who sometimes behaved honestly. Ss were divided into overload and nonoverload groups. In the nonoverload condition, Ss were given control over the presentation rate of the individual behavioral descriptions. These Ss formed an impression of the person during information acquisition and gave more processing to and had better free recall of the minority than the majority behaviors. In the overload condition, Ss were given only enough time to read each behavior once before the next was presented. Under these conditions, Ss with a chronically accessible category for honesty still formed an impression and had better recall of minority than majority behaviors, whereas Ss without such an accessible category did not. Implications for the generalizability of the person memory model, which was discussed by both R. Hastie (1980) and T. K. Srull (1981, 1984), and the conditions under which social judgments will and will not be based on memory are discussed. (57 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
An individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly viewed as a theory because such states are not directly observable, and the system can be used to make predictions about the behavior of others. As to the mental states the chimpanzee may infer, consider those inferred by our own species, for example, purpose or intention, as well as knowledge, belief, thinking, doubt, guessing, pretending, liking, and so forth. To determine whether or not the chimpanzee infers states of this kind, we showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems. Some problems were simple, involving inaccessible food – bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth – as in the original Kohler problems; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged. With each videotape the chimpanzee was given several photographs, one a solution to the problem, such as a stick for the inaccessible bananas, a key for the locked up actor, a lit wick for the malfunctioning heater. The chimpanzee's consistent choice of the correct photographs can be understood by assuming that the animal recognized the videotape as representing a problem, understood the actor's purpose, and chose alternatives compatible with that purpose.
Robert Gordon and Alvin Goldman, along with other philosophers, have challenged the received view about the cognitive mechanisms underlying our ability to describe, predict, and explain people's behavior. They agree in denying that an internally represented folk-psychological theory plays a central role in the exercise of these abilities. They also believe that a special sort of mental simulation in which we use ourselves as a model for the person we are describing or predicting, will play an important role in the correct account of the mechanisms subserving these abilities. This chapter focuses on Gordon and Goldman. It presents an account of the special sort of simulation that lies at the heart of the Gordon/Goldman proposal, focusing on the way simulation might be used to predict behavior. It explores how mental simulation might be used to explain the other two cognitive capacities that have been of special interest to philosophers: explaining behavior and producing intentional descriptions or interpretations. It explains why none of the arguments offered by Gordon and Goldman in support of their simulation theory are convincing. It then sets out two alternative arguments that show why, in light of currently available evidence, the simulation theory is very implausible.
We report a functional neuroimaging study with positron emission tomography (PET) in which six healthy adult volunteers were scanned while watching silent computer-presented animations. The characters in the animations were simple geometrical shapes whose movement patterns selectively evoked mental state attribution or simple action description. Results showed increased activation in association with mental state attribution in four main regions: medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction (superior temporal sulcus), basal temporal regions (fusiform gyrus and temporal poles adjacent to the amygdala), and extrastriate cortex (occipital gyrus). Previous imaging studies have implicated these regions in self-monitoring, in the perception of biological motion, and in the attribution of mental states using verbal stimuli or visual depictions of the human form. We suggest that these regions form a network for processing information about intentions, and speculate that the ability to make inferences about other people's mental states evolved from the ability to make inferences about other creatures' actions.
Several authors have demonstrated that theory of mind is associated with a cerebral pattern of activity involving the medial prefrontal cortex. This study was designed to determine the cerebral regions activated during attribution of intention to others, a task which requires theory-of-mind skills. Eight healthy subjects performed three nonverbal tasks using comic strips while PET scanning was performed. One condition required subjects to attribute intentions to the characters of the comic strips. The other two conditions involved only physical logic and knowledge about objects' properties: one condition involved characters, whereas the other only represented objects. The comparison of the attribution of intention condition with the physical logic with characters condition was associated with rCBF increases in the right middle and medial prefrontal cortex including Brodmann's area (BA) 9, the right inferior prefrontal cortex (BA 47), the right inferior temporal gyrus (BA 20), the left superior temporal gyrus (BA 38), the left cerebellum, the bilateral anterior cingulate, and the middle temporal gyri (BA 21). The comparison of the physical logic with characters condition and the physical logic without characters condition showed the activation of the lingual gyri (BA 17, 18, 19), the fusiform gyri (BA 37), the middle (BA 21) and superior (BA 22, 38) temporal gyri on both sides, and the posterior cingulate. These data suggest that attribution of intentions to others is associated with a complex cerebral activity involving the right medial prefrontal cortex when a nonverbal task is used. The laterality of this function is discussed.
The cognitive act of shifting attention from one place in the visual field to another can be accomplished covertly without muscular changes. The act can be viewed in terms of three internal mental operations: disengagement of attention from its current focus, moving attention to the target, and engagement of the target. Our results show that damage to the parietal lobe produces a deficit in the disengage operation when the target is contralateral to the lesion. Effects may also be found on engagement with the target. The effects of brain injury on disengagement of attention seem to be unique to the parietal lobe and do not appear to occur with our frontal, midbrain, and temporal control series. These results confirm the close connection between parietal lobes and selective attention suggested by single cell recording. They indicate more specifically the role that parietal function has on attention and suggest one mechanism of the effects of parietal lesions reported in clinical neurology.
Previous functional imaging studies have explored the brain regions activated by tasks requiring 'theory of mind'--the attribution of mental states. Tasks used have been primarily verbal, and it has been unclear to what extent different results have reflected different tasks, scanning techniques, or genuinely distinct regions of activation. Here we report results from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study (fMRI) involving two rather different tasks both designed to tap theory of mind. Brain activation during the theory of mind condition of a story task and a cartoon task showed considerable overlap, specifically in the medial prefrontal cortex (paracingulate cortex). These results are discussed in relation to the cognitive mechanisms underpinning our everyday ability to 'mind-read'.
Face perception requires representation of invariant aspects that underlie identity recognition as well as representation of changeable aspects, such as eye gaze and expression, that facilitate social communication. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the perception of face identity and eye gaze in the human brain. Perception of face identity was mediated more by regions in the inferior occipital and fusiform gyri, and perception of eye gaze was mediated more by regions in the superior temporal sulci. Eye-gaze perception also seemed to recruit the spatial cognition system in the intraparietal sulcus to encode the direction of another's gaze and to focus attention in that direction.
To understand some aspects of conceptual development it is necessary to take cognitive architecture into account. For this purpose, the study of normal development is often not sufficient. Fortunately, one can also study neurodevelopmental disorders. For example, autistic children have severe difficulties developing certain kinds of concepts but not others. We find that whereas autistic children perform very poorly on tests of the concept, believes, they are at or near ceiling on comparable tasks that test understanding of pictorial representation. A similar pattern was found in a second study which looked at understanding of a false map or diagram: normal 4-year-olds showed a marked advantage in understanding a false belief over a false map, while the autistic subjects performed better on the map. These findings suggest that the concept, believes, develops as a domain-specific notion that is not equatable with "having a picture (map or diagram) in the head." This result supports the existence of a specialized cognitive mechanism, which subserves the development of folk psychological notions, and which is dissociably damaged in autism. We extend these ideas to outline a new model of the development of false belief performance.
It has been argued that young preschoolers cannot correctly attribute a false belief to a deceived actor (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Some researchers claim that the problem lies in the child's inadequate epistemology (Chandler & Boyes, 1982; Wellman, 1988); as such, it is specific to the child's theory of mind and no such problem should appear in reasoning about nonmental representations. This prediction is tested below in the "false photograph" task: here an actor takes a photograph of an object in location X; the object is then moved to location Y. Preschool subjects are asked: "In the picture, where is the object?" Results indicate that photographs are no easier to reason about than are beliefs. Manipulations to boost performance on the photograph task proved ineffective. Further, an explanation of the failure as a processing limitation having nothing to do with the representational nature of beliefs or photographs was ruled out. It is argued that young children's failure on the false belief task is not due to an inadequate epistemology (though they may have one) and is symptomatic of a larger problem with representations.
The ability of normal children and adults to attribute independent mental states to self and others in order to explain and predict behaviour ("theory of mind") has been a focus of much recent research. Autism is a biologically based disorder which appears to be characterised by a specific impairment in this "mentalising" process. The present paper reports a functional neuroimaging study with positron emission tomography in which we studied brain activity in normal volunteers while they performed story comprehension tasks necessitating the attribution of mental states. The resultant brain activity was compared with that measured in two control tasks: "physical" stories which did not require this mental attribution, and passages of unlinked sentences. Both story conditions, when compared to the unlinked sentences, showed significantly increased regional cerebral blood flow in the following regions: the temporal poles bilaterally, the left superior temporal gyrus and the posterior cingulate cortex. Comparison of the "theory of mind" stories with "physical" stores revealed a specific pattern of activation associated with mental state attribution: it was only this task which produced activation in the medial frontal gyrus on the left (Brodmann's area 8). This comparison also showed significant activation in the posterior cingulate cortex. These surprisingly clear-cut findings are discussed in relation to previous studies of brain activation during story comprehension. The localisation of brain regions involved in normal attribution of mental states and contextual problem solving is feasible and may have implication for the neural basis of autism.
Although there is substantial evidence that 30-month-old children can reason about other people's desires, little is known about the developmental antecedents of this ability. A food-request procedure was devised to explore this understanding in 14- and 18-month-olds. Children observed an experimenter expressing disgust as she tasted 1 type of food and happiness as she lasted another type of food. They were then required to predict which food the experimenter would subsequently desire. The 14-month-olds responded egocentrically, offering whichever food they themselves preferred. However, 18-month-olds correctly inferred that the experimenter wanted the food associated with her prior positive affect. They were able to make this inference even when the experimenter's desires differed from their own. These data constitute the first empirical evidence that 18-month-olds are able to engage in some form of desire reasoning. Children not only inferred that another person held a desire, but also recognized how desires are related to emotions and understood something about the subjectivity of these desires.
Perspective taking is an essential component in the mechanisms that account for intersubjectivity and agency. Mental simulation of action can be used as a natural protocol to explore the cognitive and neural processing involved in agency. Here we took PET measurements while subjects simulated actions with either a first-person or a third-person perspective. Both conditions were associated with common activation in the SMA, the precentral gyrus, the precuneus and the MT/V5 complex. When compared to the first-person perspective, the third-person perspective recruited right inferior parietal, precuneus, posterior cingulate and frontopolar cortex. The opposite contrast revealed activation in left inferior parietal and somatosensory cortex. We suggest that the right inferior parietal, precuneus and somatosensory cortex are specifically involved in distinguishing self-produced actions from those generated by others.
Wellman and colleagues' meta-analysis of performance on the false-belief task is methodologically useful, but it does not lead to any theoretical progress concerning the nature of the mechanisms that underlie the existence and development of "theory of mind." In particular, the results of this meta-analysis are perfectly compatible with "early competence" accounts that posit a specific, innate, and possibly modular basis for theory of mind. The arguments presented by Wellman and colleagues against such views stem not from their meta-analytic data, but from mistaken assumptions regarding the requirements of such theories (e.g., that there exist manipulations that improve performance only, or to a greater degree, in young children). Contrary to what Wellman and colleagues claim, their meta-analysis, while consistent with conceptual change, does not lend any new support for such theories.
Human self-consciousness as the metarepresentation of ones own mental states and the so-called theory of mind (TOM) capacity, which requires the ability to model the mental states of others, are closely related higher cognitive functions. We address here the issue of whether taking the self-perspective (SELF) or modeling the mind of someone else (TOM) employ the same or differential neural mechanisms. A TOM paradigm was used and extended to include stimulus material that involved TOM and SELF capacities in a two-way factorial design. A behavioral study in 42 healthy volunteers showed that TOM and SELF induced differential states of mind: subjects assigned correctly first or third person pronouns when providing responses to the stimuli. Following the behavioral study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in eight healthy, right-handed males to study the common and differential neural mechanisms underlying TOM and SELF. The main factor TOM led to increased neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and left temporopolar cortex. The main factor SELF led to increased neural activity in the right temporoparietal junction and in the anterior cingulate cortex. A significant interaction of both factors TOM and SELF was observed in the right prefrontal cortex. These divergent neural activations in response to TOM and SELF suggest that these important differential mental capacities of human self-consciousness are implemented at least in part in distinct brain regions. Press
Our ability to explain and predict other people's behaviour by attributing to them independent mental states, such as beliefs and desires, is known as having a 'theory of mind'. Interest in this very human ability has engendered a growing body of evidence concerning its evolution and development and the biological basis of the mechanisms underpinning it. Functional imaging has played a key role in seeking to isolate brain regions specific to this ability. Three areas are consistently activated in association with theory of mind. These are the anterior paracingulate cortex, the superior temporal sulci and the temporal poles bilaterally. This review discusses the functional significance of each of these areas within a social cognitive network.
A region in the lateral aspect of the fusiform gyrus (FG) is more engaged by human faces than any other category of image. It has come to be known as the 'fusiform face area' (FFA). The origin and extent of this specialization is currently a topic of great interest and debate. This is of special relevance to autism, because recent studies have shown that the FFA is hypoactive to faces in this disorder. In two linked functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of healthy young adults, we show here that the FFA is engaged by a social attribution task (SAT) involving perception of human-like interactions among three simple geometric shapes. The amygdala, temporal pole, medial prefrontal cortex, inferolateral frontal cortex and superior temporal sulci were also significantly engaged. Activation of the FFA to a task without faces challenges the received view that the FFA is restricted in its activities to the perception of faces. We speculate that abstract semantic information associated with faces is encoded in the FG region and retrieved for social computations. From this perspective, the literature on hypoactivation of the FFA in autism may be interpreted as a reflection of a core social cognitive mechanism underlying the disorder.
The mentalizing (theory of mind) system of the brain is probably in operation from ca. 18 months of age, allowing implicit attribution of intentions and other mental states. Between the ages of 4 and 6 years explicit mentalizing becomes possible, and from this age children are able to explain the misleading reasons that have given rise to a false belief. Neuroimaging studies of mentalizing have so far only been carried out in adults. They reveal a system with three components consistently activated during both implicit and explicit mentalizing tasks: medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), temporal poles and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). The functions of these components can be elucidated, to some extent, from their role in other tasks used in neuroimaging studies. Thus, the MPFC region is probably the basis of the decoupling mechanism that distinguishes mental state representations from physical state representations; the STS region is probably the basis of the detection of agency, and the temporal poles might be involved in access to social knowledge in the form of scripts. The activation of these components in concert appears to be critical to mentalizing.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human brain was used to compare changes in amygdala activity associated with viewing facial expressions of fear and anger. Pictures of human faces bearing expressions of fear or anger, as well as faces with neutral expressions, were presented to 8 healthy participants. The blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal within the dorsal amygdala was significantly greater to Fear versus Anger, in a direct contrast. Significant BOLD signal changes in the ventral amygdala were observed in contrasts of Fear versus Neutral expressions and, in a more spatially circumscribed region, to Anger versus Neutral expressions. Thus, activity in the amygdala is greater to fearful facial expressions when contrasted with either neutral or angry faces. Furthermore, directly contrasting fear with angry faces highlighted involvement of the dorsal amygdaloid region.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation to static facial displays versus dynamic changes in facial identity or emotional expression. Static images depicted prototypical fearful, angry and neutral expressions. Identity morphs depicted identity changes from one person to another, always with neutral expressions. Emotion morphs depicted expression changes from neutral to fear or anger, creating the illusion that the actor was 'getting scared' or 'getting angry' in real-time. Brain regions implicated in processing facial affect, including the amygdala and fusiform gyrus, showed greater responses to dynamic versus static emotional expressions, especially for fear. Identity morphs activated a dorsal fronto-cingulo-parietal circuit and additional ventral areas, including the amygdala, that also responded to the emotion morphs. Activity in the superior temporal sulcus discriminated emotion morphs from identity morphs, extending its known role in processing biologically relevant motion. The results highlight the importance of temporal cues in the neural coding of facial displays.
Evidence from developmental psychology suggests that understanding other minds constitutes a special domain of cognition with at least two components: an early-developing system for reasoning about goals, perceptions, and emotions, and a later-developing system for representing the contents of beliefs. Neuroimaging reinforces and elaborates upon this view by providing evidence that (a) domain-specific brain regions exist for representing belief contents, (b) these regions are apparently distinct from other regions engaged in reasoning about goals and actions (suggesting that the two developmental stages reflect the emergence of two distinct systems, rather than the elaboration of a single system), and (c) these regions are distinct from brain regions engaged in inhibitory control and in syntactic processing. The clear neural distinction between these processes is evidence that belief attribution is not dependent on either inhibitory control or syntax, but is subserved by a specialized neural system for theory of mind.
Theories of Theories of Mind brings together contributions by a distinguished international team of philosophers, psychologists, and primatologists, who between them address such questions as: what is it to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people? How does such an understanding develop in the normal child? Why, unusually, does it fail to develop? And is any such mentalistic understanding shared by members of other species? The volume's four parts together offer a state of the art survey of the major topics in the theory-theory/simulationism debate within philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, the aetiology of autism and primatology. The volume will be of great interest to researchers and students in all areas interested in the 'theory of mind' debate.
A central research issue in the child's theory of mind literature is the question of whether children appreciate the subjectivity of mental phenomena. The typical research paradigm involves researchers creating a discrepancy between children's own mental states and the mental state of a protagonist, and then asking children to predict the protagonist's reaction. A prediction that fits the child's own mental state (rather than the beliefs and desires of the protagonist) is seen as an indication that the child fails to acknowledge the subjectivity of mental phenomena.
Two experiments investigated the effects of instructions to form an impression of individuals or groups on the recall of behavioral information. Several underlying factors that may affect recall were examined, including the organization of the material in memory, the availability of trait concepts as retrieval cues, the amount of processing, and the distinctiveness of the behaviors presented. In Experiment 1, subjects under instructions either to form an impression of a person, to form an impression of a group, or to remember the information received a series of trait adjectives followed by behaviors that varied in their evaluative and descriptive consistency with these adjectives. Behaviors were recalled better under person impression conditions than under other conditions; however, this difference occurred only if subjects had also recalled adjectives describing the traits that the recalled behaviors exemplified. Behaviors were recalled better under person impression conditions if they were evaluatively inconsistent with the trait adjectives presented than if they were evaluatively consistent with the adjectives; however, descriptive consistency had little effect on recall under these conditions. The effects of consistency variables under other instructional conditions were quite different. In Experiment 2, subjects received information about 12 behaviors, presented in either a list or a paragraph, under instructions either to form an impression of a person or to remember the behaviors. Unfavorable behaviors were recalled better under person impression than memory set conditions, but favorable behaviors were not. Behaviors were better recalled when they pertained to many traits than when they pertained to few, but this increase was the same regardless of instructional set. Finally, there was no evidence that the organization of the information in a list or a paragraph affected the recall of the behaviors. The implications of the results for the determinants of recall under different instructional conditions, and for the nature of cognitive representations of the information formed under different instructional sets, are discussed.
A conceptualization of the manner in which trait and behavioral information is organized in memory is proposed and applied in predicting both the recall and recognition of information about persons and groups. Three information presentation conditions were considered: (1) Subjects are told to form an impression of a target (person or group) on the basis of the target's behaviors, and are given a trait-based concept of what the target is like before learning about these behaviors. (2) Subjects are told to form an impression of the target, but a general traitbased concept of the target is not induced until after they learn about the target's behaviors. (3) Subjects receive information about the target's behaviors with instructions to remember the information, and only subsequently are told to form an impression and are given more general information about the target's traits. The proposed model accounted for between-condition differences in both the recall and recognition of behaviors that were consistent and inconsistent with a general trait-based concept of the target, and for contingencies of these differences on whether the target was a single person or a group.
The debate over off-line simulation has largely focussed on the capacity to predict behavior, but the basic idea of off-line simulation can be cast in a much broader framework. The central claim of the off-line account of behavior prediction is that the practical reasoning mechanism is taken off-line and used for predicting behavior. However, there's no reason to suppose that the idea of off-line simulation can't be extended to mechanisms other than the practical reasoning system. In principle, any cognitive component can be taken off-line and used to perform some other function. On this view of off-line simulation, such accounts differ radically from traditional information-based accounts of cognitive capacities. And cognitive penetrability provides a wedge for empirically determining whether a capacity requires an information-based account or an off-line simulation account. Stich and Nichols (1992) argued that the simulation theory of behavior prediction was inadequate because behavior prediction seemed to be cognitively penetrable. We present empirical evidence that supports the claim that the behavior prediction is cognitively penetrable. As a result, the simulation account of behavior prediction still seems unpromising. However, off-line simulation might provide accounts of other cognitive capacities. Indeed, off- line simulation accounts have recently been offered for a strikingly diverse set of capacities including counterfactual reasoning, empathy and mental imagery. Goldman, for instance, maintains that counterfactual reasoning and empathy clearly demand off-line simulation accounts. We argue that there are alternative information-based explanations of these phenomena. Nonetheless, the off-line accounts of these phenomena are interesting and clearly worthy of further exploration.
A THEORY OF SELF-PERCEPTION IS PROPOSED TO PROVIDE AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION FOR SEVERAL OF THE MAJOR PHENOMENA EMBRACED BY FESTINGER'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND TO EXPLICATE SOME OF THE SECONDARY PATTERNS OF DATA THAT HAVE APPEARED IN DISSONANCE EXPERIMENTS. IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE ATTITUDE STATEMENTS WHICH COMPRISE THE MAJOR DEPENDENT VARIABLES IN DISSONANCE EXPERIMENTS MAY BE REGARDED AS INTERPERSONAL JUDGMENTS IN WHICH THE O AND THE OBSERVED HAPPEN TO BE THE SAME INDIVIDUAL AND THAT IT IS UNNECESSARY TO POSTULATE AN AVERSIVE MOTIVATIONAL DRIVE TOWARD CONSISTENCY TO ACCOUNT FOR THE ATTITUDE CHANGE PHENOMENA OBSERVED. SUPPORTING EXPERIMENTS ARE PRESENTED, AND METATHEORETICAL CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE "RADICAL" BEHAVIORAL APPROACH UTILIZED AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TYPIFIED BY DISSONANCE THEORY ARE DISCUSSED. (2 P. REF.)
Understanding of another person's wrong belief requires explicit representation of the wrongness of this person's belief in relation to one's own knowledge. Three to nine year old children's understanding of two sketches was tested. In each sketch subjects observed how a protagonist put an object into a location x and then witnessed that in the absence of the protagonist the object was transferred from x to location y. Since this transfer came as a surprise they had to assume that the protagonist still believed that the object was in x. Subjects had to indicate where the protagonist will look for the object at his return. None of the 3–4-year old, 57% of 4–6-year old, and 86% of 6–9-year old children pointed correctly to location x in both sketches. Of the many cases where 4–6-year olds made an error they failed in only about 20% to remember the initial location correctly. As a test of the stability of children's representation of the protagonist's wrong belief the sketches continued with a statement about the protagonist's intention to either deceive an antagonist or truthfully inform a friend about the object's location. Independent of age, of those children who correctly thought that the protagonist would search in x, 85% of the time they also correctly thought that he would direct his antagonist to location y and his friend to location x. This shows that once children can represent a person's beliefs they can constrain their interpretation of this person's stated intentions to the person's beliefs. In a more story-like situation another group of children had to infer a deceptive plan from the depiction of a goal conflict between two story characters and one character's expedient utterance. At the age of 4–5 years children correctly judged this utterance as a lie only 28% of the time while 5–6-year olds did so 94% of the time. These results suggest that around the ages of 4 to 6 years the ability to represent the relationship between two or more person's epistemic states emerges and becomes firmly established.RésuméComprendre que ce que croit un tiers est erroné requiert une représentation explicitée de cette fausse croyance en relation avec son savoir propre.On a testé la compréhension de deux sketches par des enfants de 3 à 9 ans. Dans chacun des sketches les sujets observent un protagoniste placer un objet dans un lieu ‘x’, puis sont témoins du transfert de cet objet de ‘x’ en ‘y’ en l'absence du protagoniste. Ce transfert doit causer une surprise chez le protagoniste dont on assume qu'il croit que l'objet se trouve toujours en ‘x’. Les sujets doivent dire où le protagoniste va chercher l'objet. Aucun 3–4 ans n'indique correctement le lieu ‘x’, 57% des 4–6 ans et 86% des 6–9 ans le font. Parmi les nombreuses erreurs des 4–6 ans seules 20% sont attribuables à une incapacité de se souvenir du lieu ‘x’. Pour tester la stabilité de la représentation de la croyance erronée, on dit que le protagoniste a l'intention soit de tromper un adversaire soit d'informer un ami sur le lieu où se trouve l'objet. Indépendamment de leur âge, les enfants ayant donné des réponses correctes disent correctement dans 85% des cas que le protagoniste conduirait l'adversaire en ‘y’ et l'ami en ‘x’. Lorsque les enfants se représentent les croyances d'une personne, ils peuvent faire dépendre leurs interprétations des intentions exprimées par celles-ci à partir de ses croyances.Dans une situation de type histoire, un autre groupe d'enfants doit inférer un essai de tromperie à partir de la représentation d'un but conflictuel entre deux des personnages de l'énoncé tactique d'un des personnages. A 4–5 ans les enfants ne jugent correctement cet énoncé comme mensonger que dans 28% des cas alors qu'à 5–6 on a 94% de reponses correctes. Les résultats indiquent que vers 4–6 ans la capacité de représenter une relation entre les états épistémiques de deux personnes ou plus émerge et se confirme.
Nine normal volunteers performed a 'theory of mind' task while their regional brain blood flow pattern was recorded using the PET [15O]H2O technique. Control conditions induced subjects to attend to the visual and semantic attributes of known objects. In a third condition, subjects had to infer the function of an unfamiliar object from its form. In the 'theory of mind' condition, subjects had to infer function based on the form of both familiar and unfamiliar objects and in addition, model the knowledge and rationality of another mind about the function of these objects. Performance during the 'theory of mind' condition evoked the activation of a distributed set of neural networks with prominent activation of the left medial frontal lobe (Brodmann area 9) and left temporal lobe (Brodmann areas 21, 39/19, 38). This result suggests that when inferential reasoning depends on constructing a mental model about the beliefs and intentions of others, the participation of the prefrontal cortex is required. When access to such knowledge is affected by central nervous system dysfunction, such as that found in autism, modeling other minds may prove difficult.
This article analyzes the similarities and differences in forming impressions of individuals and in developing conceptions of groups. In both cases, the perceiver develops a mental conception of the target (individual or group) on the basis of available information and uses that information to make judgments about that person or group. However, a review of existing evidence reveals differences in the outcomes of impressions formed of individual and group targets, even when those impressions are based on the very same behavioral information. A model is proposed to account for these differences. The model emphasizes the role of differing expectancies of unity and coherence in individual and group targets, which in turn engage different mechanisms for processing information and making judgments. Implications of the model are discussed.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found an area in the fusiform gyrus in 12 of the 15 subjects tested that was significantly more active when the subjects viewed faces than when they viewed assorted common objects. This face activation was used to define a specific region of interest individually for each subject, within which several new tests of face specificity were run. In each of five subjects tested, the predefined candidate "face area" also responded significantly more strongly to passive viewing of (1) intact than scrambled two-tone faces, (2) full front-view face photos than front-view photos of houses, and (in a different set of five subjects) (3) three-quarter-view face photos (with hair concealed) than photos of human hands; it also responded more strongly during (4) a consecutive matching task performed on three-quarter-view faces versus hands. Our technique of running multiple tests applied to the same region defined functionally within individual subjects provides a solution to two common problems in functional imaging: (1) the requirement to correct for multiple statistical comparisons and (2) the inevitable ambiguity in the interpretation of any study in which only two or three conditions are compared. Our data allow us to reject alternative accounts of the function of the fusiform face area (area "FF") that appeal to visual attention, subordinate-level classification, or general processing of any animate or human forms, demonstrating that this region is selectively involved in the perception of faces.
Despite extensive evidence for regions of human visual cortex that respond selectively to faces, few studies have considered the cortical representation of the appearance of the rest of the human body. We present a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies revealing substantial evidence for a distinct cortical region in humans that responds selectively to images of the human body, as compared with a wide range of control stimuli. This region was found in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex in all subjects tested and apparently reflects a specialized neural system for the visual perception of the human body.
Theories of vision posit that form and motion are represented by neural mechanisms segregated into functionally and anatomically distinct pathways. Using point-light animations of biological motion, we examine the extent to which form and motion pathways are mutually involved in perceiving figures depicted by the spatio-temporal integration of local motion components. Previous work discloses that viewing biological motion selectively activates a region on the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STSp). Here we report that the occipital and fusiform face areas (OFA and FFA) also contain neural signals capable of differentiating biological from nonbiological motion. EBA and LOC, although involved in perception of human form, do not contain neural signals selective for biological motion. Our results suggest that a network of distributed neural areas in the form and motion pathways underlie the perception of biological motion.
Prior studies from our laboratory [Journal of Neuroscience 18 (1998) 2188; Cognitive Neuropsychology 17 (2000) 221] have demonstrated that discrete regions of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) are activated when a subject views a face in which the eyes shift their gaze. Here we investigated the degree to which activity in the STS and other brain regions is modulated by the context of the perceived gaze shift; that is, when the shift correctly or incorrectly acquires a visual target. Fifteen subjects participated in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment in which they viewed an animated face that remained present throughout each run. On each of 21 trials within each run, a small checkerboard appeared and flickered at one of six locations within the character's visual field. On "correct" trials, the character shifted its gaze towards the checkerboard after a delay of 1 or 3s. On "incorrect" trials, the character shifted its gaze towards empty space after the same delays. On "no shift" trials, the character's eyes did not move. Significantly larger hemodynamic responses (HDR) were evoked by gaze shifts compared to no gaze shifts in primarily right hemisphere STS. The gaze-evoked HDR was significantly delayed in peak amplitude for 3s compared to 1s shifts. For 1s shifts, a strong effect of context was observed in which errors evoked a HDR with extended duration. Although this study focused upon STS, similar effects were also observed in the intraparietal sulcus and fusiform gyrus.
We used fMRI to study the organization of brain responses to different types of complex visual motion. In a rapid eventrelated design, subjects viewed video clips of humans performing different whole-body motions, video clips of manmade manipulable objects (tools) moving with their characteristic natural motion, point-light displays of human whole-body motion, and point-light displays of manipulable objects.
The lateral temporal cortex showed strong responses to both moving videos and moving point-light displays, supporting the hypothesis that the lateral temporal cortex is the cortical locus for processing complex visual motion. Within the lateral temporal cortex, we observed segregated responses to different types of motion. The superior temporal sulcus (STS) responded strongly to human videos and human point-light displays, while the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and the inferior temporal sulcus responded strongly to tool videos and tool point-light displays.
In the ventral temporal cortex, the lateral fusiform responded more to human videos than to any other stimulus category while the medial fusiform preferred tool videos. The relatively weak responses observed to point-light displays in the ventral temporal cortex suggests that form, color, and texture (present in video but not point-light displays) are the main contributors to ventral temporal activity. In contrast, in the lateral temporal cortex, the MTG responded as strongly to point-light displays as to videos, suggesting that motion is the key determinant of response in the MTG. Whereas the STS responded strongly to point-light displays, it showed an even larger response to video displays, suggesting that the STS integrates form, color, and motion information.
This paper will discuss one aspect of the self, the ability to reflect on one's own inner states, in relation to recent work on the cognitive and neural basis of "theory of mind." Are the same representational resources required for "reading" one's own and other minds? Relevant literature from the study of normal development of theory of mind will be reviewed, along with research on a developmental disorder characterized by an apparent inability to think about thoughts: autism. Functional neuroimaging studies of theory of mind will be discussed as will studies that may tap the neural basis of self-reflection. From these different strands of evidence the speculative suggestion will be made that reflecting on one's own thoughts is not a privileged process, but rather relies on-and may have evolved from-the same cognitive and neural functions used for attributing thoughts to others.
What neural mechanism underlies the capacity to understand the emotions of others? Does this mechanism involve brain areas normally involved in experiencing the same emotion? We performed an fMRI study in which participants inhaled odorants producing a strong feeling of disgust. The same participants observed video clips showing the emotional facial expression of disgust. Observing such faces and feeling disgust activated the same sites in the anterior insula and to a lesser extent in the anterior cingulate cortex. Thus, as observing hand actions activates the observer's motor representation of that action, observing an emotion activates the neural representation of that emotion. This finding provides a unifying mechanism for understanding the behaviors of others.