CORRESPONDENCE OF BRAIN CORRELATES ASSOCIATED WITH PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF THEORY OF MIND: A WITHIN-SUBJECT FMRI STUDY

Social interaction depends on the Theory of Mind (ToM), ability to understand mental states of others, including their emotions, beliefs, and intentions Contemporary approaches emphasize that ToM comprises multiple components . In this study, we adopt the distinction between perceptual ToM, based on recognizing mental states from perceptual cues, and cognitive ToM, involving inferential reasoning about others’ beliefs. We compared brain activation associated with perceptual and cognitive components of ToM within the same participants via fMRI. In the scanner, 11 healthy right-handed adults completed perceptual ToM tasks (“Reading the Mind in the Eyes” and “Reading the Mind in the Voice”) and a “False-Belief Localizer” targeting cognitive ToM. In all paradigms, experimental conditions involving mental state processing were contrasted with control conditions describing physical reality or non-mental features.

Cognitive ToM contrasts (mental vs. physical reality) elicited activation in the right temporo-parietal junction, right superior temporal sulcus, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. On the other hand, perceptual ToM contrasts (reading the mind in the eyes/voice vs. control conditions) showed bilateral activation in the posterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal sulcus, and inferior frontal gyrus, with additional medial prefrontal cortex engagement in the voice task. Both individual and group interaction maps show low intersection between regions engaged in perceptual and cognitive ToM. These findings suggest a dissociation between perceptual and cognitive components of ToM at the neural level and support recent concerns for validity of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test as a measure of ToM.