title: Clarifying the role of theory of mind areas during visual perspective taking: Issues of spontaneity and domain-specificity.
abstract: Visual perspective taking is a fundamental feature of the human social brain. Previous research has mainly focused on explicit visual perspective taking and contrasted brain activation for other- versus self-perspective judgements. This produced a conceptual gap to theory of mind studies, where researchers mainly compared activation for taking another's mental perspective to non-mental control conditions. We compared brain activation for visual perspective taking to activation for non-mental control conditions where the avatar was replaced by directional (arrow, lamp) or non-directional (brick-wall) objects. We found domain-specific activation linked to the avatar's visual perspective in right TPJ, ventral mPFC and ventral precuneus. Interestingly, we found that these areas are spontaneously processing information linked to the other's perspective during self-perspective judgements. Based on a review of the visual perspective taking literature, we discuss how these findings can explain some of the inconsistent/negative results found in previous studies comparing other- versus self-perspective judgements.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Austria. Electronic address: Matthias.Schurz@sbg.ac.at.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schurz
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Austria; Neuroscience Institute, Christian Doppler Clinic, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kronbichler
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Weissengruber
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Surtees
authors.affiliation: Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
authors.forename: Dana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Samson
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Perner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Automatic; Mentalizing; Precuneus; Spontaneous; TPJ; Theory of mind; Visual perspective taking; mPFC