Fractionating theory of mind: a meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies.

By Matthias Schurz, Joaquim Radua, Markus Aichhorn, Fabio Richlan, Josef Perner. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2014

1,518 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We meta-analyzed imaging studies on theory of mind and formed individual task groups based on stimuli and instructions. Overlap in brain activation between all task groups was found in the mPFC and in the bilateral posterior TPJ. This supports the idea of a core network for theory of mind that is activated whenever we are reasoning about mental states, irrespective of the task- and stimulus-formats (Mar, 2011). In addition, we found a number of task-related activation differences surrounding this core-network. ROI based analyses show that areas in the TPJ, the mPFC, the precuneus, the temporal lobes and the inferior frontal gyri have distinct profiles of task-related activation. Functional accounts of these areas are reviewed and discussed with respect to our findings.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d3bca53c0ce83f1635a864e62831187bfc1b6d36

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Philipp Kanske
2. Katrin Preckel
3. Barbara J. Sahakian
4. Tania Singer
5. Jean Decety
6. Claus Lamm
7. Adam Brandenburger
8. Vinod Menon

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Fabio Cuzzolin
2. Christelle Langley
3. Barbara J. Sahakian
4. Bogdan-Ionut Cirstea
5. Tania Singer

In Social Psychology

1. Philipp Kanske
2. Katrin Preckel
3. Tania Singer
4. Adam Brandenburger
5. Claus Lamm
6. Jean Decety
7. Paul Gilbert
8. Stephanie D. Preston

Citations in the corpus

• On the interaction of social affect and cognition: empathy, compassion and theory of mind (2018, positive): “Moreover, increased coupling of SMG to dorsolateral PFC has been related to a reduction in emotional egocentricity in development DLPF PCC aMCC mPFC mOFCsgACC GP Put VS NAcc VTA SN Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences separable neural networks underlying empathy (blue), compassion insula; aMCC, an”
• Theory of Mind and Preference Learning at the Interface of Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and AI: A Review (2022, positive): “Schurz et al. (2014) conducted an important meta-analysis of neural mechanisms in ToM, but rather than pooling across studies, they specifically examined different task groups to identify regions that were commonly activated, or more specific to certain task groups.”
• Dissecting the social brain: Introducing the EmpaToM to reveal distinct neural networks and brain-behavior relations for empathy and Theory of Mind (2015, neutral): “More ventral regions of TPJ and MPFC, precuneus/PCC, STS, TP showed stronger connectivity to ToM related seed regions.”
• Intracranial recordings reveal high-frequency activity in the human temporal-parietal cortex supporting non-literal language processing (2024, unknown): “…at non-literal comprehension in brain regions that are part of the ToM network, namely the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ), the brain area most often associated with theory of mind (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003; Leslie et al., 2004; Aichhorn et al., 2009; Spreng and Grady, 2010; Schurz et al., 2014).”
• Characterising the spatial and oscillatory unfolding of Theory of Mind in adults using fMRI and MEG (2022, unknown): “Despite these methodological constraints, fMRI investigations have furthered our understanding of a network of brain regions that is consistently activated across various ToM tasks (Carrington and Bailey, 2009; Schurz et al., 2014; Kliemann and Adolphs, 2018; Arioli et al., 2021).”