Other minds in the brain: a functional imaging study of "theory of mind" in story comprehension

Abnormal fronto-limbic engagement in incarcerated stimulant users during moral processing

RATIONALE

Stimulant use is a significant and prevalent problem, particularly in criminal populations. Previous studies found that cocaine and methamphetamine use is related to impairment in identifying emotions and empathy. Stimulant users also have abnormal neural structure and function of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), amygdala, and anterior (ACC) and posterior cingulate (PCC), regions implicated in moral decision-making. However, no research has studied the neural correlates of stimulant use and explicit moral processing in an incarcerated population.

OBJECTIVES

Here, we examine how stimulant use affects sociomoral processing that might contribute to antisocial behavior. We predicted that vmPFC, amygdala, PCC, and ACC would show abnormal neural response during a moral processing task in incarcerated methamphetamine and cocaine users.

METHODS

Incarcerated adult males (N = 211) were scanned with a mobile MRI system while completing a moral decision-making task. Lifetime drug use was assessed. Neural responses during moral processing were compared between users and non-users. The relationship between duration of use and neural function was also examined.

RESULTS

Incarcerated stimulant users showed less amygdala engagement than non-users during moral processing. Duration of stimulant use was negatively associated with activity in ACC and positively associated with vmPFC response during moral processing.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest a dynamic pattern of fronto-limbic moral processing related to stimulant use with deficits in both central motive and cognitive integration elements of biological moral processes theory. This increases our understanding of how drug use relates to moral processing in the brain in an ultra-high-risk population.

Distinct neuronal patterns of positive and negative moral processing in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by severe and frequent moral violations in multiple domains of life. Numerous studies have shown psychopathy-related limbic brain abnormalities during moral processing; however, these studies only examined negatively valenced moral stimuli. Here, we aimed to replicate prior psychopathy research on negative moral judgments and to extend this work by examining psychopathy-related abnormalities in the processing of controversial moral stimuli and positive moral processing. Incarcerated adult males (N = 245) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol on a mobile imaging system stationed at the prison. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Participants were then shown words describing three types of moral stimuli: wrong (e.g., stealing), not wrong (e.g., charity), and controversial (e.g., euthanasia). Participants rated each stimulus as either wrong or not wrong. PCL-R total scores were correlated with not wrong behavioral responses to wrong moral stimuli, and were inversely related to hemodynamic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in the contrast of wrong > not wrong. In the controversial > noncontroversial comparison, psychopathy was inversely associated with activity in the temporal parietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that psychopathy-related abnormalities are observed during the processing of complex, negative, and positive moral stimuli.

Proposal of auxiliary diagnosis index for autism spectrum disorder using near-infrared spectroscopy

Lack of a diagnostic index is a problem that needs to be overcome in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), because this problem prevents an objective assessment based on biomarkers. This paper describes the development of a diagnostic index for ASD using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). We investigated continuous prefrontal hemodynamic changes depending on reciprocal disposition of working memory and nonworking memory tasks using two-channel NIRS. NIRS signals in the prefrontal cortex were compared between high-functioning ASD subjects ([Formula: see text]) and typically developed (TD) subjects ([Formula: see text]). The brain activities of the TD subjects were related to experimental design. These results were not confirmed in brain activities of ASD subjects, although the task performance rate was almost equivalent. The brain activities of TD subjects and ASD subjects were evaluated using a weighted separability (WS) index obtained from the feature phase of oxy-hemoglobin and its differential value. Calculation of the [Formula: see text]-test (TD subject versus ASD subject) confirmed that WS was significant. This result showed that the proposed index was useful for evaluation of the brain activity of ASD subjects.

An experimental investigation of the phenomenology of delusional beliefs in people with Asperger syndrome

There is evidence that Asperger syndrome is associated with delusional beliefs. Cognitive theories of delusions in psychosis literature propose a central role for impaired theory of mind ability in the development of delusions. The present study investigates the phenomenology of delusional ideation in Asperger syndrome. Fortysix individuals with Asperger syndrome participated and were found to have relatively high levels of delusional ideation, primarily grandiose or persecutory. Factors associated with delusional belief were anxiety, social anxiety and self-consciousness, but not theory of mind ability or autobiographical memory. The findings indicate that delusional belief is a prominent feature in Asperger syndrome, but do not support a mentalization based account. A preliminary cognitive model of delusions in Asperger syndrome is proposed and the theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Performance of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder on Advanced Theory of Mind Tasks

Although a number of advanced theory of mind tasks have been developed, there is sparse information on whether performance on different tasks is associated. The study examined the performance of 20 high-functioning 6- to 12-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder and 20 controls on three high-level theory of mind tasks: Strange Stories, Cartoons and the children’s version of the Eyes task. The pattern of findings suggests that the three tasks may share differing, non-specific, information-processing requirements in addition to tapping any putative mentalizing ability. They may also indicate a degree of dissociation between social-cognitive and social-perceptual or affective components of the mentalizing system.

Negative symptoms and longitudinal grey matter tissue loss in adolescents at risk of psychosis: preliminary findings from a 6-year follow-up study

BACKGROUND

Negative symptoms are perhaps the most disabling feature of schizophrenia. Their pathogenesis remains poorly understood and it has been difficult to assess their development over time with imaging techniques.

AIMS

To examine, using tensor-based structural imaging techniques, whether there are regions of progressive grey matter volume change associated with the development of negative symptoms.

METHOD

A total of 43 adolescents at risk of psychosis were examined using magnetic resonance imaging and whole brain tensor-based morphometry at two time points, 6 years apart.

RESULTS

When comparing the individuals with significant negative symptoms with the remaining participants, we identified five regions of significant grey matter tissue loss over the 6-year period. These regions included the left temporal lobe, the left cerebellum, the left posterior cingulate and the left inferior parietal sulcus.

CONCLUSIONS

Negative symptoms are associated with longitudinal grey matter tissue loss. The regions identified include areas associated with psychotic symptoms more generally but also include regions uniquely associated with negative symptoms.

Integration Processes Compared: Cortical Differences for Consistency Evaluation and Passive Comprehension in Local and Global Coherence

This research studies the neural systems underlying two integration processes that take place during natural discourse comprehension: consistency evaluation and passive comprehension. Evaluation was operationalized with a consistency judgment task and passive comprehension with a passive listening task. Using fMRI, the experiment examined the integration of incoming sentences with more recent, local context and with more distal, global context in these two tasks. The stimuli were stories in which we manipulated the consistency of the endings with the local context and the relevance of the global context for the integration of the endings. A whole-brain analysis revealed several differences between the two tasks. Two networks previously associated with semantic processing and attention orienting showed more activation during the judgment than the passive listening task. A network previously associated with episodic memory retrieval and construction of mental scenes showed greater activity when global context was relevant, but only during the judgment task. This suggests that evaluation, more than passive listening, triggers the reinstantiation of global context and the construction of a rich mental model for the story. Finally, a network previously linked to fluent updating of a knowledge base showed greater activity for locally consistent endings than inconsistent ones, but only during passive listening, suggesting a mode of comprehension that relies on a local scope approach to language processing. Taken together, these results show that consistency evaluation and passive comprehension weigh differently on distal and local information and are implemented, in part, by different brain networks.

Social Cognition and the Prefrontal Cortex

Social cognitive neuroscience is a rapidly emerging field that utilizes cognitive neuroscientific techniques (e.g., lesion studies, neuroimaging) to address concepts traditionally in the social psychological realm (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes). The purpose of this article is to review published neuroscientific and neuropsychological research into social cognition. The author focuses on the role of the prefrontal cortex in social behavior and presents a framework that provides cohesion of this research. The article proposes that this framework will be useful in guiding future social cognitive neuroscientific research.

Distinct neural patterns of social cognition for cooperation versus competition

How do people consider other minds during cooperation versus competition? Some accounts predict that theory of mind (ToM) is recruited more for cooperation versus competition or competition versus cooperation, whereas other accounts predict similar recruitment across these two contexts. The present fMRI study examined activity in brain regions for ToM (bilateral temporoparietal junction, precuneus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) across cooperative and competitive interactions with the same individual within the same paradigm. Although univariate analyses revealed that ToM regions overall were recruited similarly across interaction contexts, multivariate pattern analyses revealed that these regions nevertheless encoded information separating cooperation from competition. Specifically, ToM regions encoded differences between cooperation and competition when people believed the outcome was determined by their and their partner's choices but not when the computer determined the outcome. We propose that, when people are motivated to consider others' mental states, ToM regions encode different aspects of mental states during cooperation versus competition. Given the role of these regions for ToM, these findings reveal distinct patterns of social cognition for distinct motivational contexts.

Representing Inner Worlds: Theory of Mind in Autistic, Deaf, and Normal Hearing Children

The purpose of the study reported here was to examine the degree to which delays or deficits in developing a theory of mind are specific to children with autism or extend to other groups of atypical children with varying conversational experience and awareness. The performance of deaf children from a variety of conversational backgrounds was compared with that of autistic and normal hearing children on a range of tasks requiring representation of others' mental states. Native signers, oral deaf children, and normal hearing children scored similarly, and their performance exceeded that shown by signing deaf children from hearing families and children with autism. The latter two groups did not differ significantly from each other. These results point to an interplay among biology, conversation, and culture in the development of a theory of mind.

How the Brain Processes Causal Inferences in Text

Theoretical models of text processing, such as the construction-integration framework, pose fundamental questions about causal inference making that are not easily addressed by behavioral studies. In particular, a common result is that causal relatedness has a different effect on text reading times than on memory for the text: Whereas reading times increase linearly as causal relatedness decreases, memory for the text is best for events that are related by a moderate degree of causal relatedness and is poorer for events with low and high relatedness. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging study of the processing of two-sentence passages that varied in their degree of causal relatedness suggests that the inference process can be analyzed into two components, generation and integration, that are subserved by two large-scale cortical networks (a reasoning system in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right-hemisphere language areas). These two cortical networks, which are distinguishable from the classical left-hemisphere language areas, approximately correspond to the two functional relations observed in the behavioral results.

Neurobiology of social behavior abnormalities in autism and Williams syndrome

Social behavior is a basic behavior mediated by multiple brain regions and neural circuits, and is crucial for the survival and development of animals and humans. Two neuropsychiatric disorders that have prominent social behavior abnormalities are autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which is characterized mainly by hyposociability, and Williams syndrome (WS), whose subjects exhibit hypersociability. Here we review the unique properties of social behavior in ASD and WS, and discuss the major theories in social behavior in the context of these disorders. We conclude with a discussion of the research questions needing further exploration to enhance our understanding of social behavior abnormalities.

Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients

Is thought possible without language? Individuals with global aphasia, who have almost no ability to understand or produce language, provide a powerful opportunity to find out. Surprisingly, despite their near-total loss of language, these individuals are nonetheless able to add and subtract, solve logic problems, think about another person's thoughts, appreciate music, and successfully navigate their environments. Further, neuroimaging studies show that healthy adults strongly engage the brain's language areas when they understand a sentence, but not when they perform other nonlinguistic tasks such as arithmetic, storing information in working memory, inhibiting prepotent responses, or listening to music. Together, these two complementary lines of evidence provide a clear answer: many aspects of thought engage distinct brain regions from, and do not depend on, language.

Theory of mind for processing unexpected events across contexts

Theory of mind, or mental state reasoning, may be particularly useful for making sense of unexpected events. Here, we investigated unexpected behavior across both social and non-social contexts in order to characterize the precise role of theory of mind in processing unexpected events. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how people respond to unexpected outcomes when initial expectations were based on (i) an object's prior behavior, (ii) an agent's prior behavior and (iii) an agent's mental states. Consistent with prior work, brain regions for theory of mind were preferentially recruited when people first formed expectations about social agents vs non-social objects. Critically, unexpected vs expected outcomes elicited greater activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which also discriminated in its spatial pattern of activity between unexpected and expected outcomes for social events. In contrast, social vs non-social events elicited greater activity in precuneus across both expected and unexpected outcomes. Finally, given prior information about an agent's behavior, unexpected vs expected outcomes elicited an especially robust response in right temporoparietal junction, and the magnitude of this difference across participants correlated negatively with autistic-like traits. Together, these findings illuminate the distinct contributions of brain regions for theory of mind for processing unexpected events across contexts.

The neural basis of desire reasoning for self and others: an event-related potential study

Theory of mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states to self and others, and predict actions in terms of mental states. It is still unclear how certain kinds of processing occur in theory of mind operation. The present study compared neural activities elicited by desire reasoning for self and for others under consistent or inconsistent conditions using the event-related potential method. The results showed that the late positive component (LPC) associated with desire reasoning was larger during the 450-550 ms time period in the condition of reasoning for self than that for others when desires were inconsistent. A left hemisphere effect on the scalp distribution was observed for the LPC component. The present study showed that a left frontal LPC component might reflect the subjective categorization process in desire reasoning.

Social Working Memory Training Improves Perspective-Taking Accuracy

Despite the importance of perspective taking for navigating the social world, even healthy adults frequently misinterpret what other people think and feel. Yet, to date, no research examines whether perspective-taking accuracy can be improved among healthy adult samples. Building off of work suggesting that social working memory (SWM) capacity (i.e., the ability to maintain and manipulate social cognitive information in mind) predicts perspective-taking skills, we developed a novel SWM training intervention to test the hypothesis that SWM training improves perspective-taking accuracy. Participants were randomly assigned to complete 12 days of either SWM training or nonsocial, “cognitive working memory” (CWM) training (active control condition). Perspective-taking accuracy was assessed pre- and posttraining. SWM training significantly increased perspective-taking accuracy and these improvements significantly surpassed improvements made by participants who underwent CWM training. SWM training therefore may be an efficient route toward improved perspective-taking accuracy.

Maternal Emotional Availability and Its Association with Maternal Psychopathology, Attachment Style Insecurity and Theory of Mind

BACKGROUND/AIMS

High maternal emotional availability (EA) positively affects various domains of child development. However, the question of which factors promote or hinder maternal EA has not been investigated systematically. The present study investigated several maternal characteristics, namely maternal psychopathology, maternal attachment style insecurity, and theory of mind (ToM) as possible factors that influence maternal EA.

METHODS

The sample was comprised of 56 mothers and their preschool-aged children. Half of the mothers were diagnosed with postpartum depression and or anxiety disorders according to DSM-IV, and the other half were healthy controls.

RESULTS

The results showed that both low maternal attachment style insecurity and high ToM skills significantly predicted maternal EA sensitivity, independently from maternal postpartum and concurrent psychopathology and education. Moreover, maternal attachment style insecurity fully mediated the link between maternal postpartum psychopathology and sensitivity.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggest that maternal attachment style security can buffer negative effects of maternal psychopathology on maternal sensitivity in the mother-child interaction.

Theory of mind ability predicts prognosis of outpatients with major depressive disorder

A theory of mind (ToM) deficit in patients with major depressive episodes is associated with difficulty in social adjustment, and thus may indicate a poorer prognosis. We investigated the association between ToM deficits and the outcome in patients who had recovered from major depressive episodes. We evaluated ToM abilities of 100 patients with major depressive disorder during a period of remission. The patients were followed up for one year and their outcomes observed. After one year, patients who had a ToM deficit according to a second-order false belief question relapsed significantly more frequently than did patients who did not have a deficit (Fisher's exact test P<0.0001; relative risk (RR)=8.286; CI 2.608, 26.324). Significant differences between these two groups were shown in scores of the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale (P<0.0001). Our results suggest that a ToM deficit after symptom remission in patients with major depressive disorder predicts a higher relapse rate and lower social function one year after recovering from a major depressive episode.

Failing as doorman and disc jockey at the same time: Amygdalar dysfunction in Parkinson's disease

In Braak's model of ascending degeneration in Parkinson's disease (PD), involvement of the amygdala occurs simultaneously with substantia nigra degeneration. However, the clinical manifestations of amygdalar involvement in PD have not been fully delineated. Considered a multitask manager, the amygdala is a densely connected "hub," coordinating and integrating tasks ranging from prompt, multisensorial emotion recognition to adequate emotional responses and emotional tuning of memories. Although phylogenetically predisposed to handle fear, the amygdala handles both aversive and positive emotional inputs. In PD, neuropathological and in vivo studies suggest primarily amygdalar hypofunction. However, as dopamine acts as an inverted U-shaped amygdalar modulator, medication-induced hyperactivity of the amygdala can occur. We propose that amygdalar (network) dysfunction contributes to reduced recognition of negative emotional face expressions, impaired theory of mind, reactive hypomimia, and impaired decision making. Similarly, impulse control disorders in predisposed individuals, hallucinations, anxiety, and panic attacks may be related to amygdalar dysfunction. When available, we discuss amygdala-independent trigger mechanisms of these symptoms. Although dopaminergic agents have mostly an activation effect on amygdalar function, adaptive and compensatory network changes may occur as well, but these have not been sufficiently explored. In conclusion, our model of amygdalar involvement brings together several elements of Parkinson's disease phenomenology heretofore left unexplained and provides a framework for testable hypotheses in patients during life and in autopsy analyses.

When minds matter for moral judgment: intent information is neurally encoded for harmful but not impure acts

Recent behavioral evidence indicates a key role for intent in moral judgments of harmful acts (e.g. assault) but not impure acts (e.g. incest). We tested whether the neural responses in regions for mental state reasoning, including the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), are greater when people evaluate harmful vs impure violations. In addition, using multivoxel pattern analysis, we investigated whether the voxel-wise pattern in these regions distinguishes intentional from accidental actions, for either kind of violation. The RTPJ was preferentially recruited in response to harmful vs impure acts. Moreover, although its response was equally high for intentional and accidental acts, the voxel-wise pattern in the RTPJ distinguished intentional from accidental acts in the harm domain but not the purity domain. Finally, we found that the degree to which the RTPJ discriminated between intentional and accidental acts predicted the impact of intent information on moral judgments but again only in the harm domain. These findings reveal intent to be a uniquely critical factor for moral evaluations of harmful vs impure acts and shed light on the neural computations for mental state reasoning.

The right temporoparietal junction in attention and social interaction: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study

The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) has been associated with the ability to reorient attention to unexpected stimuli and the capacity to understand others' mental states (theory of mind [ToM]/false belief). Using activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis we previously unraveled that the anterior rTPJ is involved in both, reorienting of attention and ToM, possibly indicating a more general role in attention shifting. Here, we used neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation to directly probe the role of the rTPJ across attentional reorienting and false belief. Task performance in a visual cueing paradigm and false belief cartoon task was investigated after application of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over anterior rTPJ (versus vertex, for control). We found that attentional reorienting was significantly impaired after rTPJ cTBS compared with control. For the false belief task, error rates in trials demanding a shift in mental state significantly increased. Of note, a significant positive correlation indicated a close relation between the stimulation effect on attentional reorienting and false belief trials. Our findings extend previous neuroimaging evidence by indicating an essential overarching role of the anterior rTPJ for both cognitive functions, reorienting of attention and ToM. Hum Brain Mapp 37:796-807, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Neuroanatomical Correlates of Theory of Mind Deficit in Parkinson's Disease: A Multimodal Imaging Study

BACKGROUND

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients show theory of mind (ToM) deficit since the early stages of the disease, and this deficit has been associated with working memory, executive functions and quality of life impairment. To date, neuroanatomical correlates of ToM have not been assessed with magnetic resonance imaging in PD. The main objective of this study was to assess cerebral correlates of ToM deficit in PD. The second objective was to explore the relationships between ToM, working memory and executive functions, and to analyse the neural correlates of ToM, controlling for both working memory and executive functions.

METHODS

Thirty-seven PD patients (Hoehn and Yahr median = 2.0) and 15 healthy controls underwent a neuropsychological assessment and magnetic resonance images in a 3T-scanner were acquired. T1-weighted images were analysed with voxel-based morphometry, and white matter integrity and diffusivity measures were obtained from diffusion weighted images and analysed using tract-based spatial statistics.

RESULTS

PD patients showed impairments in ToM, working memory and executive functions; grey matter loss and white matter reduction compared to healthy controls. Grey matter volume decrease in the precentral and postcentral gyrus, middle and inferior frontal gyrus correlated with ToM deficit in PD. White matter in the superior longitudinal fasciculus (adjacent to the parietal lobe) and white matter adjacent to the frontal lobe correlated with ToM impairment in PD. After controlling for executive functions, the relationship between ToM deficit and white matter remained significant for white matter areas adjacent to the precuneus and the parietal lobe.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings reinforce the existence of ToM impairment from the early Hoehn and Yahr stages in PD, and the findings suggest associations with white matter and grey matter volume decrease. This study contributes to better understand ToM deficit and its neural correlates in PD, which is a basic skill for development of healthy social relationships.

Comprehension through explanation as the interaction of the brain's coherence and cognitive control networks

Discourse comprehension processes attempt to produce an elaborate and well-connected representation in the reader’s mind. A common network of regions including the angular gyrus, posterior cingulate, and dorsal frontal cortex appears to be involved in constructing coherent representations in a variety of tasks including social cognition tasks, narrative comprehension, and expository text comprehension. Reading strategies that require the construction of explicit inferences are used in the present research to examine how this coherence network interacts with other brain regions. A psychophysiological interaction analysis was used to examine regions showing changed functional connectivity with this coherence network when participants were engaged in either a non-inferencing reading strategy, paraphrasing, or a strategy requiring coherence-building inferences, self-explanation. Results of the analysis show that the coherence network increases in functional connectivity with a cognitive control network that may be specialized for the manipulation of semantic representations and the construction of new relations among these representations.

Compositionality and the angular gyrus: A multi-voxel similarity analysis of the semantic composition of nouns and verbs

The cognitive and neural systems that enable conceptual processing must support the ability to combine (and recombine) concepts to form an infinite number of ideas. Two candidate neural systems for conceptual combination-the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the left angular gyrus (AG)-have been characterized as "semantic hubs" due to both functional and anatomical properties; however, these two regions likely support different aspects of composition. Here we consider two hypotheses for the role of AG in conceptual combination, both of which differ from a putative role for the ATL in "feature-based" combinatorics (i.e., meaning derived by combining concepts' features). Firstly, we examine whether AG is more sensitive to function-argument relations of the sort that arise when a predicate is combined with its arguments. Secondly, we examine the non-mutually exclusive possibility that AG represents information carried on a verb in particular, whether this be information about event composition or about thematic relations denoted uniquely by verbs. We identified voxels that respond differentially to two-word versus one-word stimuli, and we measured the similarity of the patterns in these voxels evoked by (1) pairs of two-word phrases that shared a noun that was an argument, thus sharing function-argument composition (e.g. eats meat and with meat), in comparison with two-word phrases that shared only a noun, not an argument (e.g., eats meat and tasty meat); and (2) stimulus pairs that shared only an event (operationalized here as sharing a verb; e.g. eats meat and eats quickly), in comparison to both of the above. We found that activity patterns in left AG tracked information relating to the presence of an event-denoting verb in a pair of two-word phrases. We also found that the neural similarity in AG voxel patterns between two phrases sharing a verb correlated with subjects' ratings of how similar the meanings of those two verb phrases were. These findings indicate that AG represents information specific to verbs, perhaps event structure or thematic relations mediated by verbs, as opposed to argument structure in general.

Longitudinal regional brain volume loss in schizophrenia: Relationship to antipsychotic medication and change in social function

BACKGROUND

Progressive brain volume loss in schizophrenia has been reported in previous studies but its cause and regional distribution remains unclear. We investigated progressive regional brain reductions in schizophrenia and correlations with potential mediators.

METHOD

Participants were drawn from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. A total of 33 schizophrenia individuals and 71 controls were MRI scanned at baseline (mean age=34.7, SD=0.77) and at follow-up (mean age=43.4, SD=0.44). Regional brain change differences and associations with clinical mediators were examined using FSL voxelwise SIENA.

RESULTS

Schizophrenia cases exhibited greater progressive brain reductions than controls, mainly in the frontal and temporal lobes. The degree of periventricular brain volume reductions were predicted by antipsychotic medication exposure at the fourth ventricular edge and by the number of days in hospital between the scans (a proxy measure of relapse duration) at the thalamic ventricular border. Decline in social and occupational functioning was associated with right supramarginal gyrus reduction.

CONCLUSION

Our findings are consistent with the possibility that antipsychotic medication exposure and time spent in relapse partially explain progressive brain reductions in schizophrenia. However, residual confounding could also account for the findings and caution must be applied before drawing causal inferences from associations demonstrated in observational studies of modest size. Less progressive brain volume loss in schizophrenia may indicate better preserved social and occupational functions.

Temporal pole abnormalities in temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis: Clinical significance and seizure outcome after surgery

PURPOSE

To assess the clinical significance of temporal pole abnormalities (temporopolar blurring, TB, and temporopolar atrophy, TA) in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and hippocampal sclerosis (HS) with a long post-surgical follow-up.

METHODS

We studied 60 consecutive patients with TLE-HS and 1.5 preoperative MRI scans who underwent surgery and were followed up for at least 5 years (mean follow-up 7.3 years). Based on findings of pre-surgical MRI, patients were classified according to the presence of TB or TA. Groups were compared on demographic, clinical, neuropsychological data, and seizure outcome.

RESULTS

TB was found in 37 (62%) patients, while TA was found in 35 (58%) patients, always ipsilateral to HS, with a high degree of overlap (83%) between TB and TA (p<0.001). Patients with TB did not differ from those without TB with regard to history of febrile convulsions, GTCSs, age of epilepsy onset, side of surgery, seizure frequency, seizure outcome, and neuropsychological outcome. On the other hand, they were significantly older, had a longer duration of epilepsy, and displayed lower preoperative scores on several neuropsychological tests. Similar findings were observed for TA. Multivariate analysis corroborated the association between temporopolar abnormalities and age at onset, age at surgery (for TB only), and lower preoperative scores on some neuropsychological tests.

CONCLUSIONS

Temporopolar abnormalities are frequent in patients with TLE-HS. Our data support the hypothesis that TB and TA are caused by seizure-related damages. These abnormalities did not influence seizure outcome, even after a long-term post-surgical follow-up.

Theory-of-mind in individuals with Alström syndrome is related to executive functions, and verbal ability

Objective: This study focuses on cognitive prerequisites for the development of theory-of-mind (ToM), the ability to impute mental states to self and others in young adults with Alström syndrome (AS). AS is a rare and quite recently described recessively inherited ciliopathic disorder which causes progressive sensorineural hearing loss and juvenile blindness, as well as many other organ dysfunctions. Two cognitive abilities were considered; Phonological working memory (WM) and executive functions (EF), both of importance in speech development.

Methods: Ten individuals (18–37 years) diagnosed with AS, and 20 individuals with no known impairment matched for age, gender, and educational level participated. Sensory functions were measured. Information about motor functions and communicative skills was obtained from responses to a questionnaire. ToM was assessed using Happés strange stories, verbal ability by a vocabulary test, phonological WM by means of an auditory presented non-word serial recall task and EF by tests of updating and inhibition.

Results: The AS group performed at a significantly lower level than the control group in both the ToM task and the EF tasks. A significant correlation was observed between recall of non-words and EF in the AS group. Updating, but not inhibition, correlated significantly with verbal ability, whereas both updating and inhibition were significantly related to the ability to initiate and sustain communication. Poorer performance in the ToM and EF tasks were related to language perseverance and motor mannerisms.

Conclusion: The AS group displayed a delayed ToM as well as reduced phonological WM, EF, and verbal ability. A significant association between ToM and EF, suggests a compensatory role of EF. This association may reflect the importance of EF to perceive and process input from the social environment when the social interaction is challenged by dual sensory loss. We argue that limitations in EF capacity in individuals with AS, to some extent, may be related to early blindness and progressive hearing loss, but maybe also to gene specific abnormalities.

Human temporal-parietal junction spontaneously tracks others' beliefs: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Humans have the unique capacity to actively reflect on the thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge of others, but do we also track mental states spontaneously when observing other people? We asked this question by monitoring brain activity in belief-sensitive cortex using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during free-viewing of social videos. More specifically, we identified a portion of the right temporal-parietal junction (rTPJ) selective for mental state processing using an established, explicit theory of mind task, and then analyzed the brain response in that region of interest (ROI) during free-viewing of video clips involving people producing goal-directed actions. We found a significant increase in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration in our rTPJ ROI during free-viewing for all of our test videos. Activity in this region was further modulated by the extent to which the knowledge state, or beliefs, of the protagonist regarding the location of an object contrasted with the reality of where the object was hidden. Open-ended questioning suggested our participants were not explicitly focusing on belief states of the characters during free-viewing. Further analyses ruled out lower-level details of the video clips or general attentional differences between conditions as likely explanations for the results. As such, these results call into question the traditional characterization of theory of mind as a resource intensive, deliberate process, and, instead, support an emerging view of theory of mind as a foundation for, rather than the pinnacle of, human social cognition.

Processing of false belief passages during natural story comprehension: An fMRI study

The neural correlates of theory of mind (ToM) are typically studied using paradigms which require participants to draw explicit, task-related inferences (e.g., in the false belief task). In a natural setup, such as listening to stories, false belief mentalizing occurs incidentally as part of narrative processing. In our experiment, participants listened to auditorily presented stories with false belief passages (implicit false belief processing) and immediately after each story answered comprehension questions (explicit false belief processing), while neural responses were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). All stories included (among other situations) one false belief condition and one closely matched control condition. For the implicit ToM processing, we modeled the hemodynamic response during the false belief passages in the story and compared it to the hemodynamic response during the closely matched control passages. For implicit mentalizing, we found activation in typical ToM processing regions, that is the angular gyrus (AG), superior medial frontal gyrus (SmFG), precuneus (PCUN), middle temporal gyrus (MTG) as well as in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) billaterally. For explicit ToM, we only found AG activation. The conjunction analysis highlighted the left AG and MTG as well as the bilateral IFG as overlapping ToM processing regions for both implicit and explicit modes. Implicit ToM processing during listening to false belief passages, recruits the left SmFG and billateral PCUN in addition to the "mentalizing network" known form explicit processing tasks.

Temporo-parietal and fronto-parietal lobe contributions to theory of mind and executive control: an fMRI study of verbal jokes

'Getting a joke' always requires resolving an apparent incongruity, but the particular cognitive operations called upon vary depending on the nature of the joke itself. Previous research has identified the primary neural correlates of the cognitive and affective processes called upon to respond to humor generally, but little work has been done on the substrates underlying the distinct cognitive operations required to comprehend particular joke types. This study explored the neural correlates of the cognitive processes required to successfully comprehend three joke types: bridging-inference jokes (BJs), exaggeration jokes (EJs), and ambiguity jokes (AJs). For all joke types, the left dlPFC appeared to support common cognitive mechanisms, such as script-shifting, while the vACC was associated with affective appreciation. The temporo-parietal lobe (TPJ and MTG) was associated with BJs, suggesting involvement of these regions with 'theory of mind' processing. The fronto-parietal lobe (IPL and IFG) was associated with both EJs and AJs, suggesting that it supports executive control processes such as retrieval from episodic memory, self-awareness, and language-based decoding. The social-affective appreciation of verbal jokes was associated with activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus. These results allow a more precise account of the neural processes required to support the particular cognitive operations required for the understanding of different types of humor.

Characterizing donation behavior from psychophysiological indices of narrative experience

Research on narrative persuasion has yet to investigate whether this process influences behavior. The current study explored whether: (1) a narrative could persuade participants to donate to a charity, a prosocial, behavioral decision; (2) psychophysiological metrics can delineate the differences between donation/non-donation behaviors; and (3) donation behavior can be correlated with measures of psychophysiology, self-reported reactions to the narrative, and intrinsic characteristics. Participants (n = 49) completed personality/disposition questionnaires, viewed one of two versions of a narrative while EEG and ECG were recorded, completed a questionnaire regarding their reactions to the narrative, and were given an opportunity to donate to a charity related to the themes of the narrative. Results showed that: (1) 34.7% of participants donated; (2) psychophysiological metrics successfully delineated between donation behaviors and the effects of narrative version; and (3) psychophysiology and reactions to the narrative were better able to explain the variance (88 and 65%, respectively) in the amount donated than all 3 metrics combined as well as any metric alone. These findings demonstrate the promise of narrative persuasion for influencing prosocial, behavioral decisions. Our results also illustrate the utility of the previously stated metrics for understanding and possibly even manipulating behaviors resulting from narrative persuasion.

Individual differences in reading social intentions from motor deviants

As social animals, it is crucial to understand others’ intention. But is it possible to detect social intention in two actions that have the exact same motor goal? In the present study, we presented participants with video clips of an individual reaching for and grasping an object to either use it (personal trial) or to give his partner the opportunity to use it (social trial). In Experiment 1, the ability of naïve participants to classify correctly social trials through simple observation of short video clips was tested. In addition, detection levels were analyzed as a function of individual scores in psychological questionnaires of motor imagery, visual imagery, and social cognition. Results revealed that the between-participant heterogeneity in the ability to distinguish social from personal actions was predicted by the social skill abilities. A second experiment was then conducted to assess what predictive mechanism could contribute to the detection of social intention. Video clips were sliced and normalized to control for either the reaction times (RTs) or/and the movement times (MTs) of the grasping action. Tested in a second group of participants, results showed that the detection of social intention relies on the variation of both RT and MT that are implicitly perceived in the grasping action. The ability to use implicitly these motor deviants for action-outcome understanding would be the key to intuitive social interaction.

The brain's conversation with itself: neural substrates of dialogic inner speech

Inner speech has been implicated in important aspects of normal and atypical cognition, including the development of auditory hallucinations. Studies to date have focused on covert speech elicited by simple word or sentence repetition, while ignoring richer and arguably more psychologically significant varieties of inner speech. This study compared neural activation for inner speech involving conversations (‘dialogic inner speech’) with single-speaker scenarios (‘monologic inner speech’). Inner speech-related activation differences were then compared with activations relating to Theory-of-Mind (ToM) reasoning and visual perspective-taking in a conjunction design. Generation of dialogic (compared with monologic) scenarios was associated with a widespread bilateral network including left and right superior temporal gyri, precuneus, posterior cingulate and left inferior and medial frontal gyri. Activation associated with dialogic scenarios and ToM reasoning overlapped in areas of right posterior temporal cortex previously linked to mental state representation. Implications for understanding verbal cognition in typical and atypical populations are discussed.

EEG oscillations reflect the complexity of social interactions in a non-verbal social cognition task using animated triangles

The ability to attribute independent mental states (e.g. opinions, perceptions, beliefs) to oneself and others is termed Theory of Mind (ToM). Previous studies investigating ToM usually employed verbal paradigms and functional neuroimaging methods. Here, we studied oscillatory responses in the electroencephalogram (EEG) in a non-verbal social cognition task. The aim of this study was twofold: First, we wanted to investigate differences in oscillatory responses to animations differing with regard to the complexity of social "interactions". Secondly, we intended to evaluate the basic cognitive processes underlying social cognition. To this end, we analyzed theta, alpha, beta and gamma task-related de-/synchronization (TRD/TRS) during presentation of six non-verbal videos differing in the complexity of (social) "interactions" between two geometric shapes. Videos were adopted from Castelli et al. (2000)and belonged to three conditions: Videos designed to evoke attributions of mental states (ToM), interaction descriptions (goal-directed, GD) and videos in which the shapes moved randomly (R). Analyses revealed that only theta activity consistently varied as a function of social "interaction" complexity. Results suggest that ToM/GD videos attract more attention and working-memory resources and may have activated related memory contents. Alpha and beta results were less consistent. While alpha effects suggest that observation of social "interactions" may benefit from inhibition of self-centered processing, oscillatory responses in the beta range could be related to action observation. In summary, the results provide insight into basic cognitive processes involved in social cognition and render the paradigm attractive for the investigation of social cognitive processes in non-verbal populations.

Functional Organization of Social Perception and Cognition in the Superior Temporal Sulcus

The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is considered a hub for social perception and cognition, including the perception of faces and human motion, as well as understanding others' actions, mental states, and language. However, the functional organization of the STS remains debated: Is this broad region composed of multiple functionally distinct modules, each specialized for a different process, or are STS subregions multifunctional, contributing to multiple processes? Is the STS spatially organized, and if so, what are the dominant features of this organization? We address these questions by measuring STS responses to a range of social and linguistic stimuli in the same set of human participants, using fMRI. We find a number of STS subregions that respond selectively to certain types of social input, organized along a posterior-to-anterior axis. We also identify regions of overlapping response to multiple contrasts, including regions responsive to both language and theory of mind, faces and voices, and faces and biological motion. Thus, the human STS contains both relatively domain-specific areas, and regions that respond to multiple types of social information.

The Default Mode of Human Brain Function Primes the Intentional Stance

Humans readily adopt an intentional stance to other people, comprehending their behavior as guided by unobservable mental states such as belief, desire, and intention. We used fMRI in healthy adults to test the hypothesis that this stance is primed by the default mode of human brain function present when the mind is at rest. We report three findings that support this hypothesis. First, brain regions activated by actively adopting an intentional rather than nonintentional stance to a social stimulus were anatomically similar to those demonstrating default responses to fixation baseline in the same task. Second, moment-to-moment variation in default activity during fixation in the dorsomedial PFC was related to the ease with which participants applied an intentional—but not nonintentional—stance to a social stimulus presented moments later. Finally, individuals who showed stronger dorsomedial PFC activity at baseline in a separate task were generally more efficient when adopting the intentional stance and reported having greater social skills. These results identify a biological basis for the human tendency to adopt the intentional stance. More broadly, they suggest that the brain's default mode of function may have evolved, in part, as a response to life in a social world.

How to trust a perfect stranger: predicting initial trust behavior from resting-state brain-electrical connectivity

Reciprocal exchanges can be understood as the updating of an initial belief about a partner. This initial level of trust is essential when it comes to establishing cooperation with an unknown partner, as cooperation cannot arise without a minimum of trust not justified by previous successful exchanges with this partner. Here we demonstrate the existence of a representation of the initial trust level before an exchange with a partner has occurred. Specifically, we can predict the Investor's initial investment--i.e. his initial level of trust toward the unknown trustee in Round 1 of a standard 10-round Trust Game-from resting-state functional connectivity data acquired several minutes before the start of the Trust Game. Resting-state functional connectivity is, however, not significantly associated with the level of trust in later rounds, potentially mirroring the updating of the initial belief about the partner. Our results shed light on how the initial level of trust is represented. In particular, we show that a person's initial level of trust is, at least in part, determined by brain electrical activity acquired well before the beginning of an exchange.

Associated and dissociated neural substrates of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic emotion during the appreciation of everyday designed products

The aesthetics of designed products have become part of our life in modern society. This study explores the neural mechanisms of how aesthetic judgment and aesthetic emotion interplay during the appreciation of designed products that are commonly seen in daily life. Participants were 30 college students, and the stimuli were 90 pictures of everyday designed products. Based on an event-related paradigm, the findings of this study suggest that there are associative and dissociative neutral mechanisms underlying different types of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic emotion. The study identified the following main findings: (a) normative beauty and subjective beauty both involved the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); (b) subjective beauty and positive emotion both involved the right ACC; (c) subjective beauty and negative emotion both involved the precuneus; (d) subjective ugliness and negative emotion both involved the right inferior frontal gyrus; (e) subjective ugliness alone additionally activated the insula; and (f) subjective beauty alone additionally activated the caudate. The findings in this study shed light on complex but ordinary processes of aesthetic appreciation.

Neural encoding of opposing strategy values in anterior and posterior cingulate cortex

Humans, and animals, often encounter ambiguous situations that require a decision on whether to take an offense or a defense strategy. Behavioral studies suggest that a strategy decision is frequently made before concrete options are evaluated. It remains enigmatic, however, how a strategy is determined without exploration of options. Here we investigated neural correlates of quick offense-versus-defense strategy decision in a board game, shogi. We found that the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex complementally encoded the defense and attack strategy values, respectively. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared the two strategy values. Several brain regions were activated during decision of concrete moves under an instructed strategy, whereas none of them showed correlation with defense or attack strategy values in their activities during strategy decision. These findings suggest that values of alternative strategies represented in different parts of the cingulate cortex have essential roles in intuitive strategy decision-making.

Regional gray matter volume is associated with rejection sensitivity: a voxel-based morphometry study

Rejection sensitivity (RS) can be defined as the disposition that one tends to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to rejection. High-RS individuals are more likely to suffer mental disorders. Previous studies have investigated brain activity during social rejection using different kinds of rejection paradigms and have provided neural evidence of individual differences in response to rejection cues, but the association between individual differences in RS and brain structure has never been investigated. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to investigate the relationship between gray matter volume (GMV) and RS in a large healthy sample of 150 men and 188 women. The participants completed the RS Questionnaire and underwent an anatomical magnetic resonance imaging scan. Multiple regression was used to analyze the correlation between regional GMV and RS scores, adjusting for age, sex, and total brain GMV. These results showed that GMV in the region of the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus was negatively associated with RS, and GMV in the region of the inferior temporal gyrus was positively correlated with RS. These findings suggest a relationship between individual differences in RS and GMV in brain regions that are primarily related to social cognition.

Frequency-dependent alterations in the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in social anxiety disorder

BACKGROUND

Recent studies on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have found an abnormal temporal correlation between low-frequency oscillations (LFO) in social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, alterations in the amplitudes of these LFO remain unclear.

METHODS

This study included 20 SAD patients and 20 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy controls. Resting-state fMRI data were acquired using a gradient-echo echo-planar imaging sequence, and the amplitudes of LFO were investigated using the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) approach. Two frequency bands (slow-5: 0.01-0.027Hz; slow-4: 0.027-0.073Hz) were analyzed.

RESULTS

Significant differences in ALFF were observed between the two bands in widespread regions including the postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, caudate, putamen, and insula. Compared with the healthy controls, the SAD patients showed lower ALFF in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), MPFC, superior temporal gyrus, and insula but higher ALFF in the middle occipital gyrus. Furthermore, we found that the SAD patients had reduced ALFF in the MPFC in the slow-5 band.

LIMITATION

The small sample size may decrease the statistical power of the results.

CONCLUSIONS

SAD patients had frequency-dependent alteration in intrinsic brain activity. This finding may provide insights into the understanding of the pathophysiology of SAD.