title: Cognitive and affective theory of mind share the same local patterns of activity in posterior temporal but not medial prefrontal cortex.
abstract: Understanding emotions in others engages specific brain regions in temporal and medial prefrontal cortices. These activations are often attributed to more general cognitive 'mentalizing' functions, associated with theory of mind and also necessary to represent people's non-emotional mental states, such as beliefs or intentions. Here, we directly investigated whether understanding emotional feelings recruit similar or specific brain systems, relative to other non-emotional mental states. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging with multivoxel pattern analysis in 46 volunteers to compare activation patterns in theory-of-mind tasks for emotions, relative to beliefs or somatic states accompanied with pain. We found a striking dissociation between the temporoparietal cortex, that exhibited a remarkable voxel-by-voxel pattern overlap between emotions and beliefs (but not pain), and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, that exhibited distinct (and yet nearby) patterns of activity during the judgment of beliefs and emotions in others. Pain judgment was instead associated with activity in the supramarginal gyrus, middle cingulate cortex and middle insular cortex. Our data reveal for the first time a functional dissociation within brain networks sub-serving theory of mind for different mental contents, with a common recruitment for cognitive and affective states in temporal regions, and distinct recruitment in prefrontal areas.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland and Laboratory for Neurology and Imaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Clinic of Neurology, University Medical Center, CH-1211 Geneva, SwitzerlandSwiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland and Laboratory for Neurology and Imaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Clinic of Neurology, University Medical Center, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland corrado.corradi@unige.ch.
authors.forename: Corrado
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Corradi-Dell'Acqua
authors.affiliation: Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland and Laboratory for Neurology and Imaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Clinic of Neurology, University Medical Center, CH-1211 Geneva, SwitzerlandSwiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland and Laboratory for Neurology and Imaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Clinic of Neurology, University Medical Center, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hofstetter
authors.affiliation: Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland and Laboratory for Neurology and Imaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Clinic of Neurology, University Medical Center, CH-1211 Geneva, SwitzerlandSwiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland and Laboratory for Neurology and Imaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Clinic of Neurology, University Medical Center, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Patrik
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vuilleumier
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D033262:Narration; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: emotional coding; mentalizing; multivariate pattern analysis; perspective taking; social cognition