title: Reading minds versus following rules: dissociating theory of mind and executive control in the brain.
abstract: The false belief task commonly used in the study of theory of mind (ToM) requires participants to select among competing responses and inhibit prepotent responses, giving rise to three possibilities: (1) the false belief tasks might require only executive function abilities and there may be no domain-specific component; (2) executive control might be necessary for the emergence of ToM in development but play no role in adult mental state inferences; and (3) executive control and domain-specific ToM abilities might both be implicated. We used fMRI in healthy adults to dissociate these possibilities. We found that non-overlapping brain regions were implicated selectively in response selection and belief attribution, that belief attribution tasks recruit brain regions associated with response selection as much as well-matched control tasks, and that regions associated with ToM (e.g., the right temporo-parietal junction) were implicated only in the belief attribution tasks. These results suggest that both domain-general and domain-specific cognitive resources are involved in adult ToM.
authors.affiliation: MIT, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. saxe@mit.edu
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Saxe
authors.forename: Laura E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Schulz
authors.forename: Yuhong V
authors.initials: YV
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003469:Culture; D004213:Dissociative Disorders; D006801:Humans; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011932:Reading