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Electrocorticographic evidence of a common neurocognitive sequence for mentalizing about the self and others.

ABSTRACT: Neuroimaging studies of mentalizing (i.e., theory of mind) consistently implicate the default mode network (DMN). Nevertheless, the social cognitive functions of individual DMN regions remain unclear, perhaps due to limited spatiotemporal resolution in neuroimaging. Here we use electrocorticography (ECoG) to directly record neuronal population activity while 16 human participants judge the psychological traits of themselves and others. Self- and other-mentalizing recruit near-identical cortical sites in a common spatiotemporal sequence. Activations begin in the visual cortex, followed by temporoparietal DMN regions, then finally in medial prefrontal regions. Moreover, regions with later activations exhibit stronger functional specificity for mentalizing, stronger associations with behavioral responses, and stronger self/other differentiation. Specifically, other-mentalizing evokes slower and longer activations than self-mentalizing across successive DMN regions, implying lengthier processing at higher levels of representation. Our results suggest a common neurocognitive pathway for self- and other-mentalizing that follows a complex spatiotemporal gradient of functional specialization across DMN and beyond.

SUBMITTER: Tan KM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8993891 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Electrocorticographic evidence of a common neurocognitive sequence for mentalizing about the self and others.

Tan Kevin M KM Daitch Amy L AL Pinheiro-Chagas Pedro P Fox Kieran C R KCR Parvizi Josef J Lieberman Matthew D MD

Nature communications 20220408 1

Neuroimaging studies of mentalizing (i.e., theory of mind) consistently implicate the default mode network (DMN). Nevertheless, the social cognitive functions of individual DMN regions remain unclear, perhaps due to limited spatiotemporal resolution in neuroimaging. Here we use electrocorticography (ECoG) to directly record neuronal population activity while 16 human participants judge the psychological traits of themselves and others. Self- and other-mentalizing recruit near-identical cortical ...[more]

PMID: 35395826

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Project description:The face serves as a crucial cue for self-identification, while the sense of agency plays a significant role in determining our influence through actions in the environment. The current study investigates how self-identification through facial recognition may influence the perception of control via motion. We propose that self-identification might engender a belief in having control over one's own face, leading to a more acute detection and greater emphasis on discrepancies between their actions and the sensory feedback in control judgments. We refer to the condition governed by the belief in having control as the exploitation mode. Conversely, when manipulating another individual's face, the belief in personal control is absent. In such cases, individuals are likely to rely on the regularity between actions and sensory input for control judgments, exhibiting behaviors that are exploratory in nature to glean such information. This condition is termed the explorative mode. The study utilized a face-motion mixing paradigm, employing a deep generative model to enable participants to interact with either their own or another person's face through facial and head movements. During the experiment, participants observed either their own face or someone else's face (self-face vs. other-face) on the screen. The motion of the face was driven either purely by their own facial and head motion or by an average of the participant's and the experimenter's motion (full control vs. partial control). The results showed that participants reported a higher sense of agency over the other-face than the self-face, while their self-identification rating was significantly higher for the self-face. More importantly, controlling someone else's face resulted in more movement diversity than controlling one's own face. These findings support our exploration-exploitation theory: When participants had a strong belief in control triggered by the self-face, they became highly sensitive to any sensorimotor prediction errors, leading to a lower sense of agency. In contrast, when the belief of control was absent, the exploration mode triggered more explorative behaviors, allowing participants to efficiently gather information to establish a sense of agency.

Dataset Information

Electrocorticographic evidence of a common neurocognitive sequence for mentalizing about the self and others.

Publications

Electrocorticographic evidence of a common neurocognitive sequence for mentalizing about the self and others.

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