Try to see it my way – Examining the relationship between visual perspective taking and theory of mind in frontotemporal dementia

2022 ◽  
Vol 157 ◽  
pp. 105835
Author(s):  
Cherie Strikwerda-Brown ◽  
Rebekah M. Ahmed ◽  
Olivier Piguet ◽  
Muireann Irish
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
The Relationship

Try to see it my way – Examining the relationship between visual perspective taking and theory of mind in frontotemporal dementia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherie Strikwerda-Brown ◽  
Rebekah Ahmed ◽  
Olivier Piguet ◽  
Muireann Irish
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Real World ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
World Perspective

The behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is characterised by pronounced alterations in social functioning, including the understanding of others’ thoughts and feelings via theory of mind. The emergence of such impairments in other social disorders such as autism and schizophrenia is suggested to reflect an inability to imagine the other person’s visual perspective of the world. To our knowledge, this hypothesis is yet to be explored in bvFTD. Here, we sought to examine the capacity for different forms of perspective taking, including visual perspective taking and theory of mind in bvFTD, and to establish their inter-relationships and underlying neural correlates. Fifteen bvFTD patients and 15 healthy Controls completed a comprehensive battery of perspective taking measures, comprising Level 1 (‘what’) and Level 2 (‘how’) visual perspective taking tasks, a cartoon task capturing theory of mind, and a questionnaire assessing perspective taking in daily life. Compared with Controls, bvFTD patients displayed significant impairments across all perspective taking measures. These perspective taking impairments, however, were not correlated with one another in bvFTD. Moreover, controlling for visual perspective taking performance did not ameliorate the deficits in theory of mind or real-world perspective taking. Region-of-interest voxel-based morphometry analyses suggested distinct neural correlates for visual perspective taking (inferior frontal gyrus) versus theory of mind (medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus), which appeared to partially overlap with those implicated in real-world perspective taking (inferior frontal gyrus, precuneus, temporoparietal junction). Despite pervasive impairments in all aspects of perspective taking in bvFTD, our findings suggest that these deficits may reflect distinct underlying processes. Future studies manipulating discrete aspects of the tasks will help to clarify the neurocognitive mechanisms of, and relationships between different forms of perspective taking in bvFTD, along with their real-world implications.

Group membership and the effects on visual perspective taking

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Schneider ◽  
Anne Grigutsch ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Romi Zäske ◽  
Stefan R. Schweinberger
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Mental State Ascription ◽  
Ethnic Nationality ◽  
Level 1

It has been hypothesized that visual perspective-taking, a basic Theory of Mind mechanism, might operate quite automatically particularly in terms of ´what´ someone else sees. As such we were interested in whether different social categories of an agent (e.g., gender, race, nationality) influence this mental state ascription mechanism. We tested this assumption by investigating the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm using agents with different ethnic nationality appearances. A group of self-identified Turkish and German participants were asked to make visual perspective judgments from their own perspective (self-judgment) as well as from the perspective of a prototypical Turkish or German agent (other-judgment). The respective related interference effects - altercentric and egocentric interferences - were measured. When making other-judgments, German participants showed increased egocentric interferences for Turkish compared to German agents. Turkish participants showed no ethnic group influence for egocentric interferences and reported feeling associated with the German and Turkish nationality to a similar extent. For self-judgments, altercentric interferences were of similar magnitude for both ethnic agents in both participant groups. Overall this indicates that in level-1 visual perspective-taking, other-judgments and related egocentric interferences are sensitive to social categories and are better described as a flexible, controlled and deliberate mental state ascription mechanism. In contrast, self-judgments and related altercentric interference effects are better described as automatic, efficient and unconscious mental state ascription mechanisms. In a broader sense the current results suggest that we should stop considering automaticity an all-or-none principle when it comes theory of mind processes.

scholarly journals Systematic Comparison of Brain Imaging Meta-Analyses of ToM with vPT

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditi Arora ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Josef Perner
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Precentral Gyrus ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Extrastriate Body Area ◽  
Meta Analyses

In visual perspective taking (vPT) one has to concern oneself with what other people see and how they see it. Since seeing is a mental state, developmental studies have discussed vPT within the domain of “theory of mind (ToM)” but imaging studies have not treated it as such. Based on earlier results from several meta-analyses, we tested for the overlap of visual perspective taking studies with 6 different kinds of ToM studies: false belief, trait judgments, strategic games, social animations, mind in the eyes, and rational actions. Joint activation was observed between the vPT task and some kinds of ToM tasks in regions involving the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anterior precuneus, left middle occipital gyrus/extrastriate body area (EBA), and the left inferior frontal and precentral gyrus. Importantly, no overlap activation was found for the vPT tasks with the joint core of all six kinds of ToM tasks. This raises the important question of what the common denominator of all tasks that fall under the label of “theory of mind” is supposed to be if visual perspective taking is not one of them.

scholarly journals Clarifying the role of theory of mind areas during visual perspective taking: Issues of spontaneity and domain-specificity

NeuroImage ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 117 ◽  
pp. 386-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Martin Kronbichler ◽  
Sebastian Weissengruber ◽  
Andrew Surtees ◽  
Dana Samson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Domain Specificity ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking

scholarly journals Visual perspective taking is not automatic in a simplified Dot task

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Rubio-Fernandez ◽  
Madeleine Long ◽  
Vishakha Shukla ◽  
Vrinda Bhatia ◽  
Pawan Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Switching Costs ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Sighted Child ◽  
Egocentric Bias ◽  
Perspective Switching

In the Dot task, children and adults involuntarily compute an avatar’s visual perspective, which has been interpreted as automatic Theory of Mind. We conducted three experiments in India, testing newly sighted children (N=5; all girls), neurotypical children (ages 5-10; N=90; 38 girls) and adults (N=30; 18 women) in a highly simplified version of the Dot task. No evidence of automatic perspective-taking was observed, although all groups revealed perspective-taking costs. A newly sighted child and the youngest children in our sample also showed an egocentric bias, which disappeared by age 10. Responding to recent work on what Theory of Mind tasks actually measure, we conclude that the standard Dot task relies so heavily on Executive Control that the alleged evidence of automatic Theory of Mind might simply reveal perspective switching costs.

scholarly journals Heterogeneity of social cognition in temporo-parietal junction: Overlapping yet distinct representation between visual perspective-taking and theory of mind

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenji Ogawa ◽  
Yuiko Matsuyama
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Posterior Part ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Extrastriate Body Area ◽  
Within Subjects

Visual perspective taking (VPT), particularly level 2 VPT (VPT2), which allows an individual to understand that the same object can be seen differently by others, is related to the theory of mind (ToM), because both functions require a decoupled representation from oneself. Although previous neuroimaging studies have shown that VPT and ToM activate the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), it is unclear whether common neural substrates are involved in VPT and ToM. To clarify this point, the present study directly compared the TPJ activation patterns of individual participants performing VPT2 and ToM tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging and within-subjects design. VPT2-induced activations were compared with activations observed during a mental rotation task as a control task, whereas ToM-related activities were identified with a standard ToM localizer using false-belief stories. A whole-brain analysis revealed that VPT2 and ToM activated overlapping areas in the posterior part of the TPJ. By comparing the activations induced by VPT2 and ToM in individual participants, we found that the peak voxels induced by ToM were located significantly more anteriorly and dorsally within the bilateral TPJ than those measured during the VPT2 task. We further confirmed that these activity areas were spatially distinct from the nearby extrastriate body area (EBA), visual motion area (MT+), and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) using independent localizer scans. Our findings revealed that VPT2 and ToM have distinct representations, albeit partially overlapping, indicating the functional heterogeneity of social cognition within the TPJ.

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