title: Are all beliefs equal? Implicit belief attributions recruiting core brain regions of theory of mind.
abstract: Humans possess efficient mechanisms to behave adaptively in social contexts. They ascribe goals and beliefs to others and use these for behavioural predictions. Researchers argued for two separate mental attribution systems: an implicit and automatic one involved in online interactions, and an explicit one mainly used in offline deliberations. However, the underlying mechanisms of these systems and the types of beliefs represented in the implicit system are still unclear. Using neuroimaging methods, we show that the right temporo-parietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, brain regions consistently found to be involved in explicit mental state reasoning, are also recruited by spontaneous belief tracking. While the medial prefrontal cortex was more active when both the participant and another agent believed an object to be at a specific location, the right temporo-parietal junction was selectively activated during tracking the false beliefs of another agent about the presence, but not the absence of objects. While humans can explicitly attribute to a conspecific any possible belief they themselves can entertain, implicit belief tracking seems to be restricted to beliefs with specific contents, a content selectivity that may reflect a crucial functional characteristic and signature property of implicit belief attribution.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Development Centre, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Agnes Melinda
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Kovács
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Lifespan Psychology, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kühn
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Development Centre, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: György
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gergely
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Development Centre, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Gergely
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Csibra
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology and Ghent Institute of Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brass
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D056345:Theory of Mind; D055815:Young Adult