Fractionating theory of mind: A meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies

Schurz, Matthias; Raduà, Joaquim; Aichhorn, Markus; Richlan, Fabio; Perner, Josef

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.01.009

Cited by 1,402 publications

(1,484 citation statements)

References 203 publications

Supporting

129

Mentioning

1,335

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Recently, a functional segmentation of rTPJ was suggested, with anterior rTPJ being relevant both for attention shifting and processing of social information, while posterior rTPJ is concerned with theory of mind (31). The full structure would then serve as an integrating core for mentalizing, and judging/planning of social behavior (31)(32)(33). The ICA components observed as coupled during social interaction in our study cover both anterior and posterior rTPJ.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Information flow between interacting human brains: Identification, validation, and relationship to social expertise

Bilek¹,

Ruf

Schäfer³

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

144

131

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social interactions are fundamental for human behavior, but the quantification of their neural underpinnings remains challenging. Here, we used hyperscanning functional MRI (fMRI) to study information flow between brains of human dyads during real-time social interaction in a joint attention paradigm. In a hardware setup enabling immersive audiovisual interaction of subjects in linked fMRI scanners, we characterize cross-brain connectivity components that are unique to interacting individuals, identifying information flow between the sender's and receiver's temporoparietal junction. We replicate these findings in an independent sample and validate our methods by demonstrating that cross-brain connectivity relates to a key real-world measure of social behavior. Together, our findings support a central role of human-specific cortical areas in the brain dynamics of dyadic interactions and provide an approach for the noninvasive examination of the neural basis of healthy and disturbed human social behavior with minimal a priori assumptions.fMRI | hyperscanning | joint attention H uman social interactions have likely shaped brain evolution and are critical for development, health, and society. Defining their neural underpinnings is a key goal of social neuroscience. Interacting dyads, the simplest and fundamental form of human interaction, have been examined with behavioral setups that used real movement interactions during communication in real time as a proxy (1-4), providing mathematical models representing human interaction, goal sharing, mutual engagement, and coordination. To identify the neural systems supporting these behaviors, neuroimaging would be the tool of choice, but studying dyadic interactions with this method is both experimentally and analytically challenging. Consequently, the neural processes underlying human social interactions remain incompletely understood.Experimentally, studying dyads with neuroimaging technology that allows only one participant per scanner provides challenges that have been addressed in the literature in one of two ways. First, the audiovisual experiences of human social contact have been simulated using stimuli such as photographs, recorded videos, or computerized avatars in the absence of human interaction (5-7), or, recently, immersive audiovisual linkups have been used with one of the two participants being scanned (8, 9). Secondly, pioneering neuroimaging experiments have coupled two scanner sites over the Internet, a setup called hyperscanning, enabling subjects to observe higher-level behavioral responses such as choices made to accept or reject an offer in real time while in the scanners (10, 11). In the current study, we aimed to combine the advantages of these experimental approaches by enabling two humans to see (and possibly hear) each other in a hyperscanning framework, enabling an immersive social interaction while both participant's brains are imaged. To do so, we implemented a setup with delay-free data transmission and precisely synchronized data acquisitio...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Information flow between interacting human brains: Identification, validation, and relationship to social expertise

Bilek¹,

Ruf

Schäfer³

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

144

131

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Within this network, some regions of interest (ROIs) are more active during tasks that involve general forms of social cognition, such as trait inference, or assessing the similarity of others to the self (dorsal/ventral-medial prefrontal cortex; DMPFC, VMPFC; Amodio & Frith, 2006;Decety & Cacioppo, 2012;Harris, Todorov, & Fiske, 2005; Jenkins & Mitchell, 2010;Ma, Vandekerckhove, Van Hoeck, & Van Overwalle, 2012;Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005;Ochsner et al, 2005;Schurz et al, 2014; Van Overwalle, 2009;Young & Saxe, 2009). Other ROIs are more active during tasks where participants represent mental states, such as beliefs or intentions (precuneus, and right/left temporoparietal junction; PC, RTPJ, LTPJ; Ciaramidaro et al, 2007;Dodell-Feder, Koster-Hale, Bedny, & Saxe, 2011; Fletcher et al, 1995; Gallagher et al, 2000; Gobbini, Koralek, Bryan, Montgomery, & 1 In the present study, "evaluate" refers to participants rating their agreement with a given claim.…”

Section: Metaethics and Mental State Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences.

Theriault¹,

Waytz²,

Heiphetz³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

OVERLAP IN MORALS, FACTS, AND PREFERENCES 2Metaethical judgments refer to judgments about the information expressed by moral claims.Moral objectivists generally believe that moral claims are akin to facts, whereas moral subjectivists generally believe that moral claims are more akin to preferences. Evidence from developmental and social psychology has generally favored an objectivist view; however, this work has typically relied on few examples, and analyses have disallowed statistical generalizations beyond these few stimuli. The present work addresses whether morals are represented as fact-like or preference-like, using behavioral and neuroimaging methods, in combination with statistical techniques that can a) generalize beyond our sample stimuli, and b) test whether particular item features are associated with neural activity. Behaviorally, and contrary to prior work, morals were perceived as more preference-like than fact-like. Neurally, morals and preferences elicited common magnitudes and spatial patterns of activity, particularly within dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a critical region for social cognition. This common DMPFC activity for morals and preferences was present across whole-brain conjunctions, and in individually localized functional regions of interest (targeting the Theory of Mind network). By contrast, morals and facts did not elicit any neural activity in common.Follow-up item analyses suggested that the activity elicited in common by morals and preferences was explained by their shared tendency to evoke representations of mental states. We conclude that morals are represented as far more subjective than prior work has suggested. This conclusion is consistent with recent theoretical research, which has argued that morality is fundamentally about regulating social relationships.Keywords: metaethics, morality, social cognition, fMRI, theory of mind OVERLAP IN MORALS, FACTS, AND PREFERENCES 3Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences.Moral claims (e.g. "eating meat is wrong") can be evaluated on multiple levels. One may agree or disagree with a given claim (a first-order judgment); however, independent of this, one may make a second-order (i.e. metaethical) judgment-regardless of whether you agree or disagree, what information does the claim express? Moral objectivists generally believe that moral claims are either true or false, and that this truthfulness is independent of anyone's personal beliefs (i.e. moral claims are akin to facts). By contrast, moral subjectivists believe that personal beliefs govern whether moral claims are true-or that moral claims cannot be true or false at all (i.e. moral claims are akin to preferences; Sayre-McCord, 1986; for review, see Goodwin & Darley, 2010). Metaethical questions are the subject of intense philosophical debate, yet they are highly relevant to cognitive, social, and moral psychology. Metaethical questions ask how moral information is represented. It is possible that morals are represented...

show abstract

“…Lieberman, 2012a,b;Spunt and Adolphs, 2014). These regions partially overlap with several meta-analytically defined functional networks, including: (i) the so-called 'theory-of-mind' or 'mentalizing' network associated with tasks of mental-state reasoning (Gallagher and Frith, 2003;Amodio and Frith, 2006;Saxe, 2006;Carrington and Bailey, 2009;Van Overwalle and Baetens, 2009;Schurz et al, 2014); (ii) the default mode network (DMN), especially its dorsomedial PFC component (Raichle et al, 2001;Buckner et al, 2008;Andrews-Hanna et al, 2010; (iii) the network associated with mentally simulating episodes both past and future (Hassabis and Maguire, 2007;Spreng et al, 2009;Schacter et al, 2012); (iv) the network associated with comprehending narrative discourse (Ferstl and von Cramon, 2001;Ferstl et al, 2008;Mar, 2011;Nijhof and Willems, 2015); (v) the network associated with transmodal semantic processing (Binder et al, 2009;Binder and Desai, 2011) and (vi) the network associated with comprehending abstract compared to concrete words (Binder et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2010;Binder and Desai, 2011). Decreasing LOAs were associated with the majority of the left hemisphere regions reliably associated with the How > Why contrast in previous work.…”

Section: Brain Regions For Conceptualizing An Action At Different Loasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, the Why > How contrast reliably reveals activation in the dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), the anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)-regions that have been independently implicated in representing and reasoning about the mental states that typically drive actions, such as beliefs, desires and intentions (Gallagher and Frith, 2003;Saxe, 2006;Carrington and Bailey, 2009;Van Overwalle and Baetens, 2009;Mar, 2011;Denny et al, 2012;Schurz et al, 2014). Conversely, the How > Why contrast reliably activates the dorsal and ventral premotor cortex (PMC), posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG), rostral inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and dorsal precuneusregions that have been independently implicated in representing the visual motion patterns and somatomotor features of actions when perceived and performed (Caspers et al, 2010;Molenberghs et al, 2012;Rizzolatti et al, 2014), conceptualized (Kemmerer et al, 2012;Watson et al, 2013;Urgesi et al, 2014), and verbally processed (Kemmerer et al, 2012;Pulvermuller, 2013;Kemmerer, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The neural basis of conceptualizing the same action at different levels of abstraction

Spunt

Kemmerer

Adolphs

2015

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

People can conceptualize the same action (e.g. 'riding a bike') at different levels of abstraction (LOA), where higher LOAs specify the abstract motives that explain why the action is performed (e.g. 'getting exercise'), while lower LOAs specify the concrete steps that indicate how the action is performed (e.g. 'gripping handlebars'). Prior neuroimaging studies have shown that why and how questions about actions differentially activate two cortical networks associated with mental-state reasoning and action representation, respectively; however, it remains unknown whether this is due to the differential demands of the questions per se or to the shifts in LOA those questions produce. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants judged pairs of action phrases that varied in LOA and that could be framed either as a why question (Why ride a bike? Get exercise.) or a how question (How to get exercise? Ride a bike.). Question framing (why vs how) had no effect on activity in regions of the two networks. Instead, these regions uniquely tracked parametric variation in LOA, both across and within trials. This suggests that the human capacity to understand actions at different LOA is based in the relative activity of two cortical networks.

show abstract

Fractionating theory of mind: A meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies

Cited by 1,402 publications

References 203 publications

Information flow between interacting human brains: Identification, validation, and relationship to social expertise

Information flow between interacting human brains: Identification, validation, and relationship to social expertise

Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences.

The neural basis of conceptualizing the same action at different levels of abstraction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About