Understanding Intentions in Social Interaction: The Role of the Anterior Paracingulate Cortex

Abstract

Neuroimaging studies have identified the anterior paracingulate cortex (PCC) as the key prefrontal region subserving theory of mind. We adopt an evolutionary perspective hypothesizing that, in response to the pressures of social complexity, a mechanism for manipulating information concerning social interaction has emerged in the anterior PCC. To date, neuroimaging studies have not properly distinguished between intentions of persons involved in social interactions and intentions of an isolated person. In two separate fMRI experiments, we demonstrated that the anterior PCC is not necessarily involved in the understanding of other people's intentions per se, but primarily in the understanding of the intentions of people involved in social interaction. Moreover, this brain region showed activation when a represented intention implies social interaction and therefore had not yet actually occurred. This result suggests that the anterior PCC is also involved in our ability to predict future intentional social interaction, based on an isolated agent's behavior. We conclude that distinct areas of the neural system underlying theory of mind are specialized in processing distinct classes of social stimuli.

Spatio-temporal Brain Dynamics of Understanding Social Versus Private Intentions: An Electrical Neuroimaging Study

“…Then, our behavioral results show that participants take more time to decode two persons' minds without communication (i.e., private intentions) than two integrated minds (i.e., communicative intentions). These results are also consistent with previous studies on communicative intention understanding (Walter et al, 2004).…”

“…Accordingly, increasing attention focuses on communicative intention understanding in neuroscience. And a few fMRI studies start to unravel the neural bases sustaining the understanding of communicative intentions (Ciaramidaro et al, 2007;Walter et al, 2004;Brunet et al, 2000). For instance, in two separate fMRI experiments, Walter et al (2004) have demonstrated that the anterior paracingulate cortex (PCC) is not necessarily involved in the understanding of other people's intentions per se, but primarily in the understanding of the intentions of people involved in social interaction.…”

Guilt-Specific Processing in the Prefrontal Cortex

“…As this region is known to represent the primary prefrontal component of the ToM network (Walter et al 2004;Saxe 2006), this finding is consistent with our hypothesis that guilt should recruit regions within the ToM network more strongly than the control emotions. Due to its direct link to social transgression causing harm to the other(s), guilt may be inherently associated with reflecting and understanding other people's thoughts.…”

Aportes sobre el correlato neuroanatómico de la personalidad

“…Esto se conoce como mentalización, que corresponde a la habilidad de representar la perspectiva subjetiva del otro, permitiéndonos predecir su comportamiento para lograr una exitosa integración social. Walter et al hicieron la distinción entre comprender las intenciones comunicativas dentro de interacciones sociales, que activan la corteza paracingulada, y comprender las intenciones privadas de alguien, que no guarda relación con esa corteza 36 . En fin, la evidencia muestra que existe una distribución dorso-rostral, donde regiones más anteriores se asocian a representaciones metacognitivas y abstractas, que nos permiten reflexionar sobre la evaluación de resultados y acciones, y estados mentales 19,29,30 .…”