The Neural and Cognitive Time Course of Theory of Mind

McCleery, Joseph P.; Surtees, Andrew; Graham, Katharine A.; Richards, John E.; Apperly, Ian A.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1392-11.2011

Cited by 114 publications

(138 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Specifically, individuals may be engaging in inner speech while they actively think about distrusting the individual depicted. In terms of connectivity, there is evidence that the IFG is functionally connected with the TPJ during theory-of-mind tasks (McCleery, Surtees, Graham, Richards, & Apperly, 2011). The results from this study support the role of the IFG in the cognitive control and the valuation of attitudes of trust and distrust.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Trying to trust: Brain activity during interpersonal social attitude change

Filkowski

Anderson

Haas

2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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Interpersonal trust and distrust are important components of human social interaction. Although several studies have shown that brain function is associated with either trusting or distrusting others, very little is known regarding brain function during the control of social attitudes, including trust and distrust. This study was designed to investigate the neural mechanisms involved when people attempt to control their attitudes of trust or distrust toward another person. We used a novel control-of-attitudes fMRI task, which involved explicit instructions to control attitudes of interpersonal trust and distrust. Control of trust or distrust was operationally defined as changes in trustworthiness evaluations of neutral faces before and after the control-of-attitudes fMRI task. Overall, participants (n = 60) evaluated faces paired with the distrust instruction as being less trustworthy than faces paired with the trust instruction following the control-of-distrust task. Within the brain, both the control-of-trust and control-ofdistrust conditions were associated with increased temporoparietal junction, precuneus (PrC), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and medial prefrontal cortex activity. Individual differences in the control of trust were associated with PrC activity, and individual differences in the control of distrust were associated with IFG activity. Together, these findings identify a brain network involved in the explicit control of distrust and trust and indicate that the PrC and IFG may serve to consolidate interpersonal social attitudes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Trying to trust: Brain activity during interpersonal social attitude change

Filkowski

Anderson

Haas

2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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“…The dlPFC is well-documented to code for holding simultaneously and decoupling one's and other's perspective Gallagher and Frith, 2003). Especially, the right dlPFC is critically involved in the cognitive monitoring (Vogeley et al, 2001) and inhibition of one's perspective when reasoning about the perspective of someone else (Goel and Dolan, 2003;Decety, 2003, 2004;Samson et al, 2005;McCleery et al, 2011;Van der Meer et al, 2011). Concordant with these findings, stroke patients with right MFG/dlPFC damages are significantly impaired in cognitive tasks requiring patients to inhibit their egocentered perspective (Samson et al, 2005).…”

Section: Modulations Of the Mns Nodes Activation Between Empathy Andmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…The temporo-parietal and prefrontal cortices are two major areas of the mentalizing network (MENT) that sustain reasoning about the beliefs, thoughts, and intentions of others while adopting their point of view (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003;Samson et al, 2005). Especially, data from both brain-damaged patients and non-clinical populations converge on the role of the left TPJ, showing that it underlies the ability to code for the visuospatial perspective of someone else (heterocentered) (Samson et al, 2004) and ownership of perspective during ToM/mentalizing tasks Aichhorn et al, 2006;McCleery et al, 2011). Within the right PFC, the vmPFC is known to calculate and represent another individual's psychological/mental viewpoint (Gallagher et al, 2000;Frith and Frith, 2003).…”

Section: The Multidimensional Model Of Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2014

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“…On trials when the avatar can see all of the dots, the visual perspectives of the avatar and of the participant are consistent; whereas on trials when the avatar can see only some of the dots, the two visual perspectives are inconsistent. A number of behavioural experiments have confirmed that response times to judge self-perspective are longer when the two visual perspectives are inconsistent, than when they are consistent Qureshi et al, 2010;McCleery et al, 2011;Santiesteban et al, 2014). This result has been taken to support the claim that the avatar's visual perspective is spontaneously processed, under the assumption…”

mentioning

confidence: 72%

Avatars and arrows in the brain

et al. 2016

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In this Commentary article we critically assess the claims made by Schurz, Kronbichler, Weissengrubler, Surtees, Samson and Perner (2015) relating to the neural processes underlying theory of mind and visual perspective taking. They attempt to integrate research findings in these two areas of social neuroscience using a perspective taking task contrasting mentalistic agents (‗avatars'), with non-mentalistic control stimuli (‗arrows'), during functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. We support this endeavour whole-heartedly, agreeing that the integration of findings in these areas has been neglected in research on the social brain. However, we cannot find among the behavioural or neuroimaging data presented by Schurz et al. evidence supporting their claim of ‗implicit mentalizing' -the automatic ascription of mental states to another representing what they can see. Indeed, we suggest that neuroimaging methods may be ill-suited to address the existence of implicit mentalizing, and suggest that approaches utilizing neurostimulation methods are likely to be more successful.Keywords: Visual perspective taking; implicit mentalizing; theory of mind; domain-general; attentional orienting A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT AVATARS AND ARROWS IN THE BRAIN 3 Avatars and Arrows in the BrainIn a recent paper, Schurz et al. (2015) seek to integrate research on the neural mechanisms underlying theory of mind and visual perspective taking. They do this using a perspective taking task devised by Samson et al. (2010), involving ‗avatars', and a control condition that we added recently to this task (Santiesteban et al., 2014), involving arrows.We applaud their clear-sighted identification of a -conceptual gap‖ (Schurz et al., p. 386) in research on the social brain, and attempt to fill it using an avatar-arrow comparison inSamson et al.'s perspective taking task. However, as we shall explain in this commentary, we cannot find among the behavioural or neuroimaging data presented by Schurz et al.evidence of implicit mentalizing, rather than domain-general processing.In the dot perspective task, participants see an image of a room with discs or dots on the walls. In the centre of the room is a human figure, an avatar, who, because s/he is facing to the left or the right, can see either all, or only some, of the dots. Participants are asked to judge either how many dots they themselves can see: an explicit self-perspective judgement;or how many dots the avatar can see: an explicit other-perspective judgement. Importantly, because the avatar cannot always see the same number of dots as the participant themselves, this task allows researchers to address the question of whether the avatar's visual perspective is spontaneously processed even when judging self-perspective. On trials when the avatar can see all of the dots, the visual perspectives of the avatar and of the participant are consistent; whereas on trials when the avatar can see only some of the dots, the two visual perspectives are inconsistent. A...

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The Neural and Cognitive Time Course of Theory of Mind

Cited by 114 publications

References 32 publications

Trying to trust: Brain activity during interpersonal social attitude change

Trying to trust: Brain activity during interpersonal social attitude change

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

Avatars and arrows in the brain

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