Human electrocorticography reveals a common neurocognitive pathway for mentalizing about the self and others

Abstract

Hundreds of neuroimaging studies show that mentalizing (i.e., theory of mind) recruits default mode network (DMN) regions with remarkable consistency. Nevertheless, the social-cognitive functions of individual DMN regions remain unclear, perhaps due to the limited spatiotemporal resolution of neuroimaging. We used electrocorticography (ECoG) to record neuronal population activity while 16 human subjects judged the psychological traits of themselves and others. Self- and other-mentalizing recruited near-identical neuronal populations in a common spatiotemporal sequence: activations were earliest in visual cortex, followed by temporoparietal DMN regions, and finally medial prefrontal cortex. Critically, regions with later activations showed greater functional specificity for mentalizing, greater self/other differentiation, and stronger associations with behavioral response times. Moreover, other-mentalizing evoked slower and lengthier activations than self-mentalizing across successive DMN regions, suggesting temporally extended demands on higher-level processes. Our results reveal a common neurocognitive pathway for self- and other-mentalizing that follows a hierarchy of functional specialization across DMN regions.

Neural similarity between mentalizing and live social interaction

“…The cluster of ROIs comprising the first variant (i.e., distinguishing Mental and Non-mental conditions for the Character) includes cortical midline structures typically associated with offline social cognitive processes (i.e., posterior cingulate, precuneus, and frontal pole), as well as bilateral cerebellum and the left IPL/SMG. This similarity structure could be interpreted as being in line with traditional studies of self/other appraisals that have participants make offline evaluations about others, and have uncovered differences in many of the brain regions mentioned above (29,(79)(80)(81). A larger number of ROIs comprise the second variant that distinguishes the two peer conditions, which span a wider range of associated socio-emotional functions, including mentalizing, memory, affective, social perceptual, and empathic processes.…”

Neural responses underlying extraordinary altruists’ generosity for socially distant others

“…This finding in controls is consistent with work showing that dorsomedial PFC activity during a social judgment task increases with prosociality (i.e., increases as the value of others' outcomes increases), suggesting that helping others may stem from the spontaneous ability to understand others (42). Since altruists show a divergent pattern in this region, it is possible that their altruistic choices do not similarly stem from mentalizing about others-a cognitive process that is thought to occur later in a cortical hierarchy of social information processing (43,44). Among altruists, we instead observe patterns of increasing activation as a function of social value in regions thought to process social information earlier in this hierarchy, including right fusiform gyrus, left superior temporal sulcus, and striatum.…”