Seeing It My Way or Your Way: Frontoparietal Brain Areas Sustain Viewpoint-independent Perspective Selection Processes

Abstract

A hallmark of human social interaction is the ability to consider other people's mental states, such as what they see, believe, or desire. Prior neuroimaging research has predominantly investigated the neural mechanisms involved in computing one's own or another person's perspective and largely ignored the question of perspective selection. That is, which brain regions are engaged in the process of selecting between self and other perspectives? To address this question, the current fMRI study used a behavioral paradigm that required participants to select between competing visual perspectives. We provide two main extensions to current knowledge. First, we demonstrate that brain regions within dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices respond in a viewpoint-independent manner during the selection of task-relevant over task-irrelevant perspectives. More specifically, following the computation of two competing visual perspectives, common regions of frontoparietal cortex are engaged to select one's own viewpoint over another's as well as select another's viewpoint over one's own. Second, in the absence of conflict between the content of competing perspectives, we showed a reduced engagement of frontoparietal cortex when judging another's visual perspective relative to one's own. This latter finding provides the first brain-based evidence for the hypothesis that, in some situations, another person's perspective is automatically and effortlessly computed, and thus, less cognitive control is required to select it over one's own perspective. In doing so, we provide stronger evidence for the claim that we not only automatically compute what other people see but also, in some cases, we compute this even before we are explicitly aware of our own perspective.

Inhibiting the posterior medial prefrontal cortex by rTMS decreases the discrepancy between self and other in Theory of Mind reasoning

“…However, presenting self-and other-belief trials intermixed might have biased the participants to take the other's perspective which resulted in this pattern of reaction times. This is also consistent with findings from visual perspective taking, which previously revealed faster reaction times for judging the other's compared to one's own perspective in a task in which subjects were asked for both perspectives in an interleaved fashion [50,54].…”

Are All Beliefs Equal? Implicit Belief Attributions Recruiting Core Brain Regions of Theory of Mind

“…Indeed, in the present study, using an implicit belief attribution task that is analogous to earlier used explicit ToM task, we found an activation of the MPFC in the true belief - object present condition, but not in the false belief conditions. Earlier studies have found that the MPFC is involved in representing various characteristics of other agents besides their beliefs, such as their appearance and emotions [27], [28] or a viewpoint-independent perspective selection [15].…”

The cognitive and neural time course of empathy and sympathy: An electrical neuroimaging study on self–other interaction

“…McCleery et al used ToM tasks in which participants solved high-level visuo-spatial conflicts between their own and others' perspective. It may be put forward that computing the others' perspective in the left TPJ was necessary to, then, decouple one's from other's perspective in the right dlPFC and solve the conflict of perspectives (see also Vogeley et al, 2001;Ramsey et al, 2013). Our tasks did not require high-level computation of differences in perspective and have probably rather induced perspective inhibition.…”