title: The link between social cognition and self-referential thought in the medial prefrontal cortex.
abstract: The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in seemingly disparate cognitive functions, such as understanding the minds of other people and processing information about the self. This functional overlap would be expected if humans use their own experiences to infer the mental states of others, a basic postulate of simulation theory. Neural activity was measured while participants attended to either the mental or physical aspects of a series of other people. To permit a test of simulation theory's prediction that inferences based on self-reflection should only be made for similar others, targets were subsequently rated for their degree of similarity to self. Parametric analyses revealed a region of the ventral mPFC--previously implicated in self-referencing tasks--in which activity correlated with perceived self/other similarity, but only for mentalizing trials. These results suggest that self-reflection may be used to infer the mental states of others when they are sufficiently similar to self.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. jmitchel@wjh.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Jason P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: Mahzarin R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Banaji
authors.forename: C Neil
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Macrae
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D017352:Echo-Planar Imaging; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception