"Mental travel" is a cognitive concept embodying the human capacity to intentionally disengage from the here and now, and mentally experience the world from different perspectives. We explored how individuals mentally "travel" to the point-of-view (POV) of other people in varying levels of personal closeness and from these perspectives process these people's social network. Under fMRI, participants were asked to "project" themselves to the POVs of four different people: a close other, a non-close other, a famous-person, and their own-self, and rate the level of affiliation (closeness) to different individuals in the respective social network. Participants were always faster making judgments from their own POV compared to other POVs (self-projection effect) and for people who were personally closer to their adopted POV (social-distance effect). Brain activity at the medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex in the self-POV was higher, compared to all other conditions. Activity at the right temporoparietal junction and medial parietal cortex was found to distinguish between the personally related (self, close and non-close others) and unrelated (famous-person) people. No difference was found between mental travel to the POVs of close and non-close others. Regardless of POV, the precuneus, anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, and temporoparietal junction distinguished between close and distant individuals within the different social networks. Representational similarity analysis implicated the left retrosplenial cortex as crucial for social distance processing across all POVs. These distinctions suggest several constraints regarding our ability to adopt others' POV, and process not only ours but also other people's social networks.
Mental travel in the social domain
