Ongoing development of social cognition in adolescence

Functional activity and effective connectivity of the posterior medial prefrontal cortex during processing of incongruent mental states

The neurocognitive components of Theory of Mind reasoning remain poorly understood. In particular the role of the posterior medial prefrontal cortex in the processing of other's mental states such as beliefs that are incongruent with one's own knowledge of reality is not clear-cut. It is unknown whether this region is involved in computing discrepant mental states or in subsequently resolving a response conflict between the discrepant others' and one's own beliefs. To test this, we adapted a false belief paradigm for the separate inspection of functional brain activity related to (1) the computation of diverging beliefs and (2) the subsequent consideration and selection of another's or one's own belief. Based on statistical parametric findings from functional neuroimaging, we employed dynamic causal modelling combined with Bayesian model selection to further characterize the interplay of resulting brain regions. In the initial computation of diverging beliefs, the posterior medial prefrontal cortex (pMPFC) and the bilateral temporoparietal cortex were crucially involved. The findings suggest that the bilateral temporal cortex engages in the construction and adjustment of diverging mental states by encoding relevant environmental information. The pMPFC inhibits this stimulus-bound processing which helps to compute discrepant mental states and process another's false belief decoupled from one's own perception of reality. In the subsequent question phase the right temporoparietal cortex showed increased activity related to switching to and reconsidering another's beliefs in order to select the correct response.

The neuroethology of friendship

Friendship pervades the human social landscape. These bonds are so important that disrupting them leads to health problems, and difficulties forming or maintaining friendships attend neuropsychiatric disorders like autism and depression. Other animals also have friends, suggesting that friendship is not solely a human invention but is instead an evolved trait. A neuroethological approach applies behavioral, neurobiological, and molecular techniques to explain friendship with reference to its underlying mechanisms, development, evolutionary origins, and biological function. Recent studies implicate a shared suite of neural circuits and neuromodulatory pathways in the formation, maintenance, and manipulation of friendships across humans and other animals. Health consequences and reproductive advantages in mammals additionally suggest that friendship has adaptive benefits. We argue that understanding the neuroethology of friendship in humans and other animals brings us closer to knowing fully what it means to be human.

Emotional reactions of peers influence decisions about fairness in adolescence

During adolescence, peers take on increasing importance, while social skills are still developing. However, how emotions of peers influence social decisions during that age period is insufficiently known. We therefore examined the effects of three different emotional responses (anger, disappointment, happiness) on decisions about fairness in a sample of 156 adolescents aged 12–17 years. Participants received written emotional responses from peers in a version of the Dictator Game to a previous unfair offer. Adolescents reacted with more generous offers after disappointed reactions compared to angry and happy reactions. Furthermore, we found preliminary evidence for developmental differences over adolescence, since older adolescents differentiated more between the three emotions than younger adolescents. In addition, individual differences in social value orientation played a role in decisions after happy reactions of peers to a previous unfair offer, such that participants with a “proself” orientation made more unfair offers to happy peers than “prosocial” participants. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that adolescents take emotions of peers into account when making social decisions, while individual differences in social value orientation affect these decisions, and age seems to influence the nature of the reaction.

Ongoing neural development of affective theory of mind in adolescence

Affective Theory of Mind (ToM), an important aspect of ToM, involves the understanding of affective mental states. This ability is critical in the developmental phase of adolescence, which is often related with socio-emotional problems. Using a developmentally sensitive behavioral task in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study investigated the neural development of affective ToM throughout adolescence. Eighteen adolescent (ages 12-14 years) and 18 young adult women (aged 19-25 years) were scanned while evaluating complex affective mental states depicted by actors in video clips. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) showed significantly stronger activation in adolescents in comparison to adults in the affective ToM condition. Current results indicate that the vmPFC might be involved in the development of affective ToM processing in adolescence.

The influence of inhibitory processes on affective theory of mind in young and old adults

The primary aim of this study was to examine the impact of an inhibition manipulation on the effect of age on theory of mind (ToM) in an ecologically valid, affective ToM task. Participants were 30 young and 30 old adults. The Cambridge Mindreading Face-Voice Battery was used to measure ToM; in addition, measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence were taken. Participants were subjected to three levels of inhibitory demand during ToM reasoning: emotional inhibition, non-emotional inhibition, and no inhibition. Old adults performed worse than young adults. The emotional and non-emotional inhibition conditions resulted in worse ToM performance compared to the no inhibition condition. There were no differences in the impact of the inhibition conditions on old and young adults. Regression analyses suggested that old adults' crystallized intelligence was a significant predictor of ToM performance, whereas it did not predict young adults' ToM performance. Results are discussed in terms of verbal ability as a possible compensatory mechanism in coping with verbal inhibitory load in ToM reasoning.