Theory of Mind Performance in Children Correlates With Functional Specialization of a Brain Region for Thinking About Thoughts

Abstract

Thinking about other people's thoughts recruits a specific group of brain regions, including the temporo-parietal junctions (TPJ), precuneus (PC), and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The same brain regions were recruited when children (N=20, 5-11 years) and adults (N=8) listened to descriptions of characters' mental states, compared to descriptions of physical events. Between ages 5 and 11 years, responses in the bilateral TPJ became increasingly specific to stories describing mental states as opposed to people's appearance and social relationships. Functional activity in the right TPJ was related to children's performance on a high level theory of mind task. These findings provide insights into the origin of neural mechanisms of theory of mind, and how behavioral and neural changes can be related in development.

The Control of Automatic Imitation Based on Bottom–Up and Top–Down Cues to Animacy: Insights from Brain and Behavior

“…These findings are consistent with accounts of ASD that support a deficit in controlling imitation based on social factors (Southgate & Hamilton, 2008), rather than a deficit in the mirror neuron system (Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007;Williams, Whiten, Suddendorf, & Perrett, 2001). Typical development of mental state reasoning abilities is associated with increasing selectivity of TPJ responses (Gweon, Dodell-Feder, Bedny, & Saxe, 2012) and rTPJ responses in adulthood during imitation-inhibition overlap with belief reasoning tasks (Spengler, von Cramon, & Brass, 2009). As such, imitative problems in ASD may result from a reduced "social sense": An inability to spontaneously "mindread" or attribute mental states to others (Senju, Southgate, White, & Frith, 2009), rather than a primary dysfunction in a system that matches observed and executed actions, such as the mirror neuron system (Iacoboni, 2009).…”

Perceived live interaction modulates the developing social brain

“…This null result is in contrast to research finding increased middle childhood specialization for explicit mentalizing in similar regions (Gweon et al, 2012). One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that, although similar brain regions are implicated in explicit and implicit mentalizing (Kovacs et al, 2014;Schneider et al, 2014), specialization for the more implicit mentalizing required by ongoing interaction-the type displayed in interactive contexts even by very young children-happens before explicit specialization.…”

“…For example, regions involved in mentalizing in adults (including precuneus and bilateral TPJ) become increasingly selective for processing mental states as compared with general social information (Gweon et al, 2012). Further, the degree of mental state specialization in right TPJ correlates with mentalizing ability (Gweon et al, 2012). TPJ also shows protracted structural development (Shaw et al, 2008).…”

“…Further, during middle childhood, the brain's mentalizing network undergoes functional and structural development. For example, regions involved in mentalizing in adults (including precuneus and bilateral TPJ) become increasingly selective for processing mental states as compared with general social information (Gweon et al, 2012). Further, the degree of mental state specialization in right TPJ correlates with mentalizing ability (Gweon et al, 2012).…”

Effects of Increased Levels of Prenatal Mesotocin on Postnatal Individual Recognition and Stress Responsiveness in Northern bobwhite quail (Colinus Virginianus)

“…The influence of this paradigm shift on the investigation of social affiliation remains widely evident today. Thus, there has been a surge in the study of physiological mechanisms underlying overt behaviors specifically related to social affiliation or cognition (Gweon, Dodell-Feder, Bedny, & Saxe, 2012;Haan, Pascalis, & Johnson, 2002). For example, Haan and colleagues (2002) were able to show using electroencephalogram (EEG) that when adults were shown pictures of human or nonhuman primate faces, and upright or inverted faces, the adults' face-responsive N-170 event-related potential (ERP) component showed specificity to the upright human faces only.…”