Temporo-parietal junction activity in theory-of-mind tasks: Falseness, beliefs, or attention
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
An fmri investigation of spontaneous mental state inference for moral judgment
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Common and unique neural correlates of autobiographical memory and theory of mind
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Distinct neural systems involved in agency and animacy detection
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Human behavior understanding for robotics
HBU'12 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Human Behavior Understanding
The power of a handshake: Neural correlates of evaluative judgments in observed social interactions
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Extensive left temporal pole damage does not impact on theory of mind abilities
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
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We compared two tasks that are widely used in research on mentalizing---false belief stories and animations of rigid geometric shapes that depict social interactions---to investigate whether the neural systems that mediate the representation of others' mental states are consistent across these tasks. Whereas false belief stories activated primarily the anterior paracingulate cortex (APC), the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus (PCC/PC), and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)---components of the distributed neural system for theory of mind (ToM)---the social animations activated an extensive region along nearly the full extent of the superior temporal sulcus, including a locus in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), as well as the frontal operculum and inferior parietal lobule (IPL)---components of the distributed neural system for action understanding---and the fusiform gyrus. These results suggest that the representation of covert mental states that may predict behavior and the representation of intentions that are implied by perceived actions involve distinct neural systems. These results show that the TPJ and the pSTS play dissociable roles in mentalizing and are parts of different distributed neural systems. Because the social animations do not depict articulated body movements, these results also highlight that the perception of the kinematics of actions is not necessary to activate the mirror neuron system, suggesting that this system plays a general role in the representation of intentions and goals of actions. Furthermore, these results suggest that the fusiform gyrus plays a general role in the representation of visual stimuli that signify agency, independent of visual form.