Temporo-parietal junction activity in theory-of-mind tasks: Falseness, beliefs, or attention
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuroelectric methodologies for the study of the economic decisions in humans
Proceedings of the Third COST 2102 international training school conference on Toward autonomous, adaptive, and context-aware multimodal interfaces: theoretical and practical issues
Distinct neural systems involved in agency and animacy detection
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Intention processing in communication: A common brain network for language and gestures
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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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.