Neural Mechanism of Inferring Person's Inner Attitude towards Another Person through Observing the Facial Affect in an Emotional Context.
OBJECTIVE
The goal of the present study was to identify the brain mechanism involved in the attribution of person's attitude toward another person, using facial affective pictures and pictures displaying an affectively-loaded situation.


METHODS
Twenty four right-handed healthy subjects volunteered for our study. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine brain activation during attitude attribution task as compared to gender matching tasks.


RESULTS
We identified activation in the left inferior frontal cortex, left superior temporal sulcus, and left inferior parietal lobule during the attitude attribution task, compared to the gender matching task.


CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that mirror neuron system and ventrolateral inferior frontal cortex play a critical role in the attribution of a person's inner attitude towards another person in an emotional situation.
Kim
Ji-Woong
JW
Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Konyang University, Daejeon, Korea.
Kim
Jae-Jin
JJ
Jeong
Bumseok
B
Kim
Sung-Eun
SE
Ki
Seon Wan
SW
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