Reading the mind in cartoons and stories: an fMRI study of ‘theory of mind’ in verbal and nonverbal tasks

Brain activation when hearing one's own and others' names

“…These regions are similar to the activation at the temporo-parietal junction reported in an fMRI study when subjects perform a 'theory of mind' task (Gallagher et al, 2000), and activation in superior temporal cortex when making judgments about others (Mitchell et al, 2002). In addition, we found activation in left cuneus and fusiform gyrus (largely BA 18) similar to the activation of posterior cingulate when making judgments about others (Macrae et al, 2004) and to the activation of left fusiform gyrus in a recognition task of one's own face (Kircher et al, 2000).…”

“…For example, a network of brain regions involved in the ability to attribute mental states to self and others, known as "mentalizing", include the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporal-parietal junction near the anterior portions of the superior temporal gyrus (Frith, 2001). In addition, the left superior temporal gyrus and the left medial frontal gyrus are activated when subjects engage in a theory-of-mind task relative to reading sentences (Fletcher et al, 1995;Gallagher et al, 2000;Mitchell et al, 2002), and activation occurs in left superior temporal cortex (Brodmann area 22) and left inferior parietal cortex when subjects judge whether adjectives are relevant to themselves (Fossati et al, 2003;Macrae et al, 2004). Using fMRI, the medial surface of the superior frontal gyrus is activated when calling a subject's own name relative to calling the names of others (Kampe et al, 2003), and the right frontal cortex, including superior, middle, and inferior regions, is activated when subjects identified the faces of self and famous others (Platek et al, 2004).…”

Narrative speech production: An fMRI study using continuous arterial spin labeling

“…Several studies have used fMRI to monitor the appreciation of narrative coherence, finding that bilateral medial and lateral frontal and anterior temporal regions are activated while listening to a narrative relative to baselines involving rest or unrelated sentences (Fletcher et al, 1995;Gallagher, 2000;Mazoyer et al, 1993;Xu, Kemeny, Park, Frattali, & Braun, 2005). A more explicit approach to the evaluation of narrative reported left medial prefrontal activation during explicit judgments of the coherence of pairs of sentences (Ferstl et al, 2002) or coherence judgments depending on the presence of definite articles (Robertson et al, 2000).…”

Executive function, mentalizing and humor in major depression

“…For instance, Stuss et al (2001) reported that frontal lobe lesions impaired the ability to infer mental states from others. In an imaging study by Gallagher et al (2000) the mentalizing condition of a story and a cartoon task was associated with activation in the medial prefrontal cortex. Vollm et al (2006) reported activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction and temporal poles.…”