scholarly journals The Social Brain Automatically Predicts Others' Future Mental States

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Thornton ◽  
Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽  
Diana I. Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
The Social

People represent their own mental states more distinctly than others’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽  
Judith Mildner ◽  
Diana Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Cues

One can never know the internal workings of another person – one can only infer others’ mental states based on external cues. In contrast, each person has direct access to the contents of their own mind. Here we test the hypothesis that this privileged access shapes the way people represent internal mental experiences, such that they represent their own mental states more distinctly than the states of others. Across four studies, participants considered their own and others’ mental states; analyses measured the distinctiveness of mental state representations. Two neuroimaging studies used representational similarity analyses to demonstrate that the social brain manifests more distinct activity patterns when thinking about one’s own states versus others’. Two behavioral studies support these findings. Further, they demonstrate that people differentiate between states less as social distance increases. Together these results suggest that we represent our own mind with greater granularity than the minds of others.

scholarly journals Adolescents are delayed at inferring complex social intentions in others, but not basic (false) beliefs: An eye-movement investigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 1640-1659
Author(s):  
Irine Symeonidou ◽  
Iroise Dumontheil ◽  
Heather J Ferguson ◽  
Richard Breheny
Keyword(s):  
Middle Childhood ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Developmental Differences ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Functional Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adolescents And Adults ◽  
Gaze Bias ◽  
The Brain

Most developmental research on Theory of Mind (ToM)—our ability to infer the beliefs, intentions, and desires of others—has focused on the preschool years. This is unsurprising as it was previously thought that ToM skills are developed between the ages of 2 and 7 years. Over the last couple of decades however, studies have provided evidence for significant structural and functional changes in the brain areas involved in ToM (the “social brain”) not only during childhood but also during adolescence. Importantly, some of these findings suggest that the use of ToM shows a prolonged development through middle childhood and adolescence. Although evidence from previous studies suggests a protracted development of ToM, the factors that constrain performance during middle childhood and adolescence are only just beginning to be explored. In this article, we report two visual-world eye-tracking studies that focus on the timecourse of predictive inferences. We establish that when the complexity of ToM inferences are at a level which is comparable with standard change-of-location false-belief tasks, then adolescents and adults generate predictions for other agents’ behaviour in the same timecourse. However, when inferences are socially more complex, requiring inferences about higher order mental states, adolescents generate predictive gaze bias at a marked delay relative to adults. Importantly, our results demonstrate that these developmental differences go beyond differences in executive functions (inhibitory control or working memory) and point to distinct expectations between groups and greater uncertainty when predicting actions based on conflicting desires.

scholarly journals The social brain?

2007 ◽  
Vol 362 (1480) ◽  
pp. 671-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris D Frith
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Communicative Acts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lesion Studies ◽  
Emotional Value ◽  
Complex Trajectories ◽  
Considerable Support

The notion that there is a ‘social brain’ in humans specialized for social interactions has received considerable support from brain imaging and, to a lesser extent, from lesion studies. Specific roles for the various components of the social brain are beginning to emerge. For example, the amygdala attaches emotional value to faces, enabling us to recognize expressions such as fear and trustworthiness, while the posterior superior temporal sulcus predicts the end point of the complex trajectories created when agents act upon the world. It has proved more difficult to assign a role to medial prefrontal cortex, which is consistently activated when people think about mental states. I suggest that this region may have a special role in the second-order representations needed for communicative acts when we have to represent someone else's representation of our own mental state. These cognitive processes are not specifically social, since they can be applied in other domains. However, these cognitive processes have been driven to ever higher levels of sophistication by the complexities of social interaction.

Distinct Neural Systems Involved in Agency and Animacy Detection

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 1911-1920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Ida Gobbini ◽  
Claudio Gentili ◽  
Emiliano Ricciardi ◽  
Claudia Bellucci ◽  
Pericle Salvini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medial Pfc ◽  
Evoked Activity ◽  
Human Faces

We designed an fMRI experiment comparing perception of human faces and robotic faces producing emotional expressions. The purpose of our experiment was to investigate engagement of different parts of the social brain by viewing these animate and inanimate agents. Both human and robotic face expressions evoked activity in face-responsive regions in the fusiform gyrus and STS and in the putative human mirror neuron system. These results suggest that these areas mediate perception of agency, independently of whether the agents are living or not. By contrast, the human faces evoked stronger activity than did robotic faces in the medial pFC and the anterior temporal cortex—areas associated with the representation of others' mental states (theory of mind), whereas robotic faces evoked stronger activity in areas associated with perception of objects and mechanical movements. Our data demonstrate that the representation of the distinction between animate and inanimate agents involves areas that participate in attribution of mental stance.

The social brain automatically predicts others’ future mental states

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽  
Diana Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Repetition Suppression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pattern Similarity ◽  
The Brain

Social life requires people to predict the future: people must anticipate others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions in order to interact with them successfully. The theory of predictive coding suggests that the social brain may meet this need by automatically predicting others’ social futures. If so, when representing others’ current mental state, the brain should already start representing their future states. To test this hypothesis, we used functional neuroimaging to measure participants’ neural representations of mental states. Representational similarity analysis revealed that neural patterns associated with mental states currently under consideration resembled patterns of likely future states, more so than patterns of unlikely future states. This effect manifested in activity across the social brain network, and in medial prefrontal cortex in particular. Repetition suppression analysis also supported the social predictive coding hypothesis: considering mental states presented in predictable sequences reduced activity in the precuneus, relative to unpredictable sequences. In addition to demonstrating that the brain makes automatic predictions of others’ social futures, the results also demonstrate that the brain leverages a three-dimensional representational space to make these predictions. Proximity between mental states on the psychological dimensions of rationality, social impact, and valence explained much of the association between state-specific neural pattern similarity and state transition likelihood. Together, these findings suggest that the way the brain represents the social present gives people an automatic glimpse of the social future.

scholarly journals The preterm social brain: altered functional networks for Theory of Mind in very preterm children

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah I Mossad ◽  
Marlee M Vandewouw ◽  
Mary Lou Smith ◽  
Margot J Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Functional Mri ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Very Preterm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Preterm Born

Abstract Neurodevelopmental difficulties emerge in very preterm born children (<32-week gestation) in infancy and continue to early adulthood but little is known about their social-cognitive development. This study utilized the complementary methodological advantages of both functional MRI and magnetoencephalography to examine the neural underpinnings of Theory of Mind in very preterm birth. Theory of Mind, one of the core social-cognitive skills, is the ability to attribute mental states to others, and is crucial for predicting others’ behaviours in social interactions. Eighty-three children (40 very preterm born, 24 boys, age = 8.7 ± 0.5 years, and 43 full-term born, 22 boys, age = 8.6 ± 0.5 years) completed the study. In functional MRI, both groups recruited classic Theory of Mind areas, without significant group differences. However, reduced Theory of Mind connectivity in the very preterm born group was found in magnetoencephalography in distinct theta, alpha and beta-band networks anchored in a set of brain regions that comprise the social brain. These networks included regions such as the angular gyrus, the medial pre-frontal cortex, the superior temporal gyrus and the temporal poles. Very preterm born children showed increased connectivity compared to controls in a network anchored in the occipital gyri rather than classical social-processing regions. Very preterm born children made significantly more attribution errors and mis-construed the social scenarios. Findings offer novel insight into the neural networks, supporting social cognition in very preterm born children and highlight the importance of multimodal neuroimaging to interrogate the social brain in clinical populations.

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