People thinking about thinking people. The role of the temporo-parietal junction in "theory of mind".
Humans powerfully and flexibly interpret the behaviour of other people based on an understanding of their minds: that is, we use a "theory of mind." In this study we distinguish theory of mind, which represents another person's mental states, from a representation of the simple presence of another person per se. The studies reported here establish for the first time that a region in the human temporo-parietal junction (here called the TPJ-M) is involved specifically in reasoning about the contents of another person's mind. First, the TPJ-M was doubly dissociated from the nearby extrastriate body area (EBA; Downing et al., 2001). Second, the TPJ-M does not respond to false representations in non-social control stories. Third, the BOLD response in the TPJ-M bilaterally was higher when subjects read stories about a character's mental states, compared with stories that described people in physical detail, which did not differ from stories about nonhuman objects. Thus, the role of the TPJ-M in understanding other people appears to be specific to reasoning about the content of mental states.
Saxe
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R
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NE20-464, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. saxe@mit.edu
Kanwisher
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N
D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D012938:Social Perception; D013067:Speech Perception; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology
D010100:Oxygen