Neural correlates of theory-of-mind are associated with variation in children’s everyday social cognition

Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to reason about others’ mental states, is central to healthy social development. Neural mechanisms supporting ToM may contribute to individual differences in children’s social cognitive behavior. Employing a false belief functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, we identified patterns of neural activity and connectivity elicited by ToM reasoning in school-age children (N = 32, ages 9–13). Next, we tested relations between these neural ToM correlates and children’s everyday social cognition. Several key nodes of the neural ToM network showed greater activity when reasoning about false beliefs (ToM condition) vs non-mentalistic false content (control condition), including the bilateral temporoparietal junction (RTPJ and LTPJ), precuneus (PC) and right superior temporal sulcus. In addition, children demonstrated task-modulated changes in connectivity among these regions to support ToM relative to the control condition. ToM-related activity in the PC was negatively associated with variation in multiple aspects of children’s social cognitive behavior. Together, these findings elucidate how nodes of the ToM network act and interact to support false belief reasoning in school-age children and suggest that neural ToM mechanisms are linked to variation in everyday social cognition.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Basic and Higher Order Cognitive and Affective Theory of Mind Processing in Emerging and Early Adulthood—An Explorative Event-Related Potentials Study to Investigate First-, Second-, and Third-Order Theory of Mind Processing Based on Visual Cues

“…The current results showing increased amplitudes at both hemispheres can potentially be linked to the results of the eLORETA analyses which showed that third-order trials consistently elicited the strongest activation in the PCC, the cuneus, as well as the TPJ, all regions of the established ToM network (see e.g., Abu-Akel and Shamay-Tsoory, 2011). The cuneus and the TPJ were previously associated with processing others' mental states (e.g., Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003;Schlaffke et al, 2015;Lin et al, 2018;Boccadoro et al, 2019;Mukerji et al, 2019), whereas the TPJ was additionally associated with other cognitive functions such as attention, memory, and language processing (e.g., Igelström et al, 2015). The PCC together with the precuneus, on the other hand, was previously associated with processing mental states of oneself (Lou et al, 2004).…”

Social Cognition in a Research Domain Criteria Perspective: A Bridge Between Schizophrenia and Autism Spectra Disorders

“…SC involves a broad range of neural regions and networks in stimulus processing in the central nervous system. Neuroimaging studies represent an important tool for the comprehension of the neural bases that explain the mechanisms of SC, since they can provide not only an assessment of brain anatomy but also of neural activity in specific regions as well as its relations (65)(66)(67)(68)(69). In this sense, the use of structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has become a fundamental strategy for understanding these neural bases, as well as for studying psychiatric diseases that classically present alterations in SC, such as ASD and SSD (70)(71)(72)(73).…”

Early continuity in neuronal correlates of mentalizing: ALE meta-analyses in adults, children and youths

“…Similarly, Richardson and colleagues (2018) detected increasing connectivity with age between temporoparietal junction, precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex in children aged 3 to 12 years of age during an implicit Theory of Mind task (i.e., watching a movie that elicits mentalizing). Again other studies reported no age effects in connectivity during mentalizing, but stable connectivity patterns between areas associated with mentalizing (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, precuneus) and striatum/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (McCormick et al, 2018;in 8 to 16-year-olds) or within mentalizing regions (temporoparietal junction, superior temporal sulcus, precuneus (Mukerji et al, 2019); in 9 to 13-year-olds). Such differences in findings may arise due to variations in the tasks employed or the characteristics of the sample studied, e.g., the age range.…”