Neural correlates of theory-of-mind reasoning: an event-related potential study

Agreeableness modulates mental state decoding: Electrophysiological evidence

Agreeableness is one of the five personality traits which is associated with theory of mind (ToM) abilities. One of the critical processes involved in ToM is the decoding of emotional cues. In the present study, we investigated whether this process is modulated by agreeableness using electroencephalography (EEG) while taking into account task complexity and sex differences that are expected to moderate the relationship between emotional decoding and agreeableness. This approach allowed us to identify at which stage of the neural processing agreeableness kicks in, in order to distinguish the impact on early, perceptual processes from slower, inferential processing. Two tasks were employed and submitted to 62 participants during EEG recording: the reading the mind in the eyes (RME) task, requiring the decoding of complex mental states from eye expressions, and the biological (e)motion task, involving the perception of basic emotional actions through point-light body stimuli. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed a significant correlation between agreeableness and the contrast for emotional and non-emotional trials in a late time window only during the RME task. Specifically, higher levels of agreeableness were associated with a deeper neural processing of emotional versus non-emotional trials within the whole and male samples. In contrast, the modulation in females was negligible. The source analysis highlighted that this ERP-agreeableness association engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Our findings expand previous research on personality and social processing and confirm that sex modulates this relationship.

Neural correlates of mental state decoding and mental state reasoning in schizophrenia

Theory of mind skills are disrupted in schizophrenia. However, various theory of mind tasks measure different neurocognitive domains. This multimodal neuroimaging study aimed to investigate the neuroanatomical correlates of mental state decoding and reasoning components of theory of mind in schizophrenia and healthy controls (HCs) using T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted (DTI) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Sixty-two patients with schizophrenia and 34 HCs were included. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RMET) and Hinting tests were used to evaluate mental state decoding and reasoning, respectively. Correlations between social cognition and cortical parameters (thickness, volume, surface area), or DTI scalars (fractional anisotropy, axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity) were cluster-based corrected for multiple comparisons. In schizophrenia, RMET scores showed positive correlations in 3 clusters, including left insula thickness, right superior-temporal thickness, left superior-temporal-sulcus volume, and DTI analysis revealed that fractional anisotropy showed positive correlations in 3 clusters, including right inferior-fronto-occipital fasciculus, left forceps-major, left inferior-fronto-occipital fasciculus. In schizophrenia, Hinting test scores showed positive correlations in 3 clusters in T1-weighted MRI, including left superior-temporal-sulcus volume, left superior-temporal-sulcus surface area, left pars-orbitalis volume. In conclusion, this study provided evidence for the involvement of particular cortical regions and white matter tracts in mental state decoding and reasoning.

P300 as a correlate of false beliefs and false statements

INTRODUCTION

This study investigates P300 as a component for false belief and false statement processing with and without a communicative context. The purpose is to understand why P300 has been shown to be commonly involved in false belief and lie processing.

METHODS

Participants were presented with a story in which the protagonist holds a true belief and makes a true statement of it (true belief), holds a false belief and makes a true statement (false belief), or holds a true belief and makes a false statement (false statement) while electroencephalograms were recorded.

RESULTS

In Experiment 1, featuring a solitary protagonist, stronger posterior P300 was shown in the false belief condition than the true belief and false statement condition. With the installation of a communicative context by including a second character listening to the protagonist, Experiment 2 showed enhanced frontal P300 in the false statement condition compared to the true belief and false belief condition. A late slow wave was more prominent in the false belief condition than in the other two conditions in Experiment 2.

CONCLUSION

The present results suggest a situation-dependent nature of P300. The signal captures the discrepancy between belief and reality more readily than that between belief and words under a noncommunicative context. It becomes more sensitive to the discrepancy between belief and words than that between belief and reality in a communicative situation with an audience, which makes any false statement practically a lie.

What naturalistic stimuli tell us about pronoun resolution in real-time processing

Studies on pronoun resolution have mostly utilized short texts consisting of a context and a target sentence. In the current study we presented participants with nine chapters of an audio book while recording their EEG to investigate the real-time resolution of personal and demonstrative pronouns in a more naturalistic setting. The annotation of the features of the pronouns and their antecedents registered a surprising pattern: demonstrative pronouns showed an interpretive preference for subject/agent antecedents, although they are described to have an anti-subject or anti-agent preference. Given the presence of perspectival centers in the audio book, this however confirmed proposals that demonstrative pronouns are sensitive to perspectival centers. The ERP results revealed a biphasic N400–Late Positivity pattern at posterior electrodes for the demonstrative pronoun relative to the personal pronoun, thereby confirming previous findings with highly controlled stimuli. We take the observed N400 for the demonstrative pronoun as an indication for more demanding processing costs that occur due to the relative unexpectedness of this referential expression. The Late Positivity is taken to reflect the consequences of attentional reorientation: since the demonstrative pronoun indicates a possible shift in the discourse structure, it induces updating of the discourse structure. In addition to the biphasic pattern, the data showed an enhanced positivity at frontal electrode sites for the demonstrative pronoun relative to the personal pronoun. We suggest that this frontal positivity reflects self-relevant engagement and identification with the perspective holder. Our study suggests that by using naturalistic stimuli, we get one step closer to understanding the implementation of language processing in the brain during real life language processing.

Associations Between Parent Mental State Language and Child Inhibitory Control in Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

PURPOSE

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) are at increased risk for neurocognitive delays, which can have cascading effects on development. Associations between neurocognition and the content of parental language-specifically the use of mental state vocabulary-have been observed in typically hearing (TH) children. This study investigated the role of parental use of mental state language (e.g., vocabulary related to thought processes, desires, and emotions) in explaining variability in neurocognition in children who are D/HH.

METHOD

Dyads of 62 TH and 69 D/HH children who wear hearing aids or cochlear implants (ages 3-8 years) and their primary parent were videorecorded during a 20-min play session. Specific mental state words used by parents were extracted. Child neurocognition (specifically, inhibitory control) was assessed using norm-referenced measures.

RESULTS

Parent use of mental state language predicted child inhibitory control differentially based on hearing status, with a significant relation in the D/HH but not the TH group. Mental state vocabulary related to cognition (e.g., "think," "know"), but not to desire (e.g., "want," "like") or emotion (e.g., "feel," "frustrated"), predicted child inhibitory control in the D/HH group. Finally, there was a significant relation between the use of first person, but not second or third person, mental state verbs (e.g., "I think") and child inhibitory control.

CONCLUSIONS

Parental use of cognitive mental state vocabulary models language around thought processes, and parents' use of first-person referents models "self-talk." Modeling of these linguistic forms is likely foundational for developing self-regulation. Children who are D/HH often experience reduced auditory access and/or language delays and thus rely on high-quality parental language input for longer periods of development than their TH peers. Continued support from interventionists is indicated to coach parents to be high-quality models of more abstract, decontextualized language, supporting complex language development and inhibitory control in children who are D/HH.

Dysfunction of Emotion Regulation in Mild Cognitive Impairment Individuals Combined With Depressive Disorder: A Neural Mechanism Study

Depression increases the risk of progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to dementia, where impaired emotion regulation is a core symptom of depression. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the decreased emotion regulation in individuals with MCI combined with depressive symptoms are not precise. We assessed the behavioral performance by emotion regulation tasks and recorded event-related electroencephalography (EEG) signals related to emotion regulation tasks simultaneously. EEG analysis, including event-related potential (ERP), event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP), functional connectivity and graph theory, was used to compare the difference between MCI individuals and MCI depressed individuals in behavioral performance, the late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, neural oscillations and brain networks during the processing of emotional stimuli. We found that MCI depressed individuals have negative preferences and are prone to allocate more attentional resources to negative stimuli. Results suggested that theta and alpha oscillations activity is increased, and gamma oscillations activity is decreased during negative stimulus processing in MCI depressed individuals, thus indicating that the decreased emotion regulation in MCI depressed individuals may be associated with enhanced low-frequency and decreased high-frequency oscillations activity. Functional connectivity analysis revealed a decrease in functional connectivity in the left cerebral hemisphere of the alpha band and an increase in functional connectivity in the right cerebral hemisphere of the alpha band in MCI depressed individuals. Graph theory analysis suggested that global network metrics, including clustering coefficients and disassortative, decreased, while nodal and modular network metrics regarding local nodal efficiency, degree centrality, and betweenness centrality were significantly increased in the frontal lobe and decreased in the parieto-occipital lobe, which was observed in the alpha band, further suggesting that abnormal alpha band network connectivity may be a potential marker of depressive symptoms. Correlational analyses showed that depressive symptoms were closely related to emotion regulation, power oscillations and functional connectivity. In conclusion, the dominant processing of negative stimuli, the increased low-frequency oscillations activity and decreased high-frequency activity, so as the decrease in top-down information processing in the frontal parieto-occipital lobe, results in the abnormality of alpha-band network connectivity. It is suggested that these factors, in turn, contribute to the declined ability of MCI depressed individuals in emotion regulation.

An Electrocortical Measure Associated with Metarepresentation Mediates the Relationship between Autism Symptoms and Theory of Mind

Impairments in theory of mind (ToM) - long considered common among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - are in fact highly heterogeneous across this population. While such heterogeneity should be reflected in differential recruitment of neural mechanisms during ToM reasoning, no research has yet uncovered a mechanism that explains these individual differences. In this study, 78 (48 ASD) adolescents viewed ToM vignettes and made mental state inferences about characters' behavior while participant electrophysiology was concurrently recorded. Two candidate event-related potentials (ERPs) - the Late Positive Complex (LPC) and the Late Slow Wave (LSW) - were successfully elicited. LPC scores correlated positively with ToM accuracy and negatively with ASD symptom severity. Notably, the LPC partially mediated the relationship between ASD symptoms and ToM accuracy, suggesting this ERP component, thought to represent cognitive metarepresentation, may help explain differences in ToM performance in some individuals with ASD.

Electrophysiological Evidence of Impaired Cognitive Reappraisal in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment: An Event-related Potential Study

BACKGROUND

Emotion dysregulation symptoms are associated with higher conversion rates from MCI to dementia. Thus, understanding the neural mechanism underlying emotion regulation in people with MCI could provide useful information in early detection and intervention of MCI. This study investigated cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, in people with MCI using event-related potentials analysis.

METHODS

Late positive potential (LPP) was measured in 46 amnestic MCI subjects and 47 healthy elderly controls (HECs) as they viewed neutral and unpleasant images. All participants viewed a brief description of the upcoming image; neutral images were neutrally described (the Neut condition), and negative images were preceded with either more neutral/positive (the Rea condition) or more negative (the Neg condition) interpretations.

RESULTS

MCI subjects reduced their emotional intensity to a smaller extent than HEC subjects. For MCI subjects, the decreased level of emotional intensity was positively correlated with function in the verbal and executive domains. The reduced intensity (Rea - Neg) was also inversely correlated with the LPP difference (Rea - Neg) 3,600-5,000 ms after stimulus onset. Compared with HEC subjects, MCI subjects showed hypoactivation in the cuneus in the N2 time range (240-310 ms) and in the inferior parietal lobule and supramarginal gyrus in the 3,600-5,000 ms range.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that MCI subjects failed to maintain the reappraisal of negative stimuli in the late time window, which contributed to a smaller success with reappraisal.

Theory of mind in dysphoric and non--dysphoric adults: An ERP study of true-- and false--belief reasoning

Theory of mind (ToM) - the understanding that others' behaviors are connected with internal mental states - is an important part of everyday social cognition. There is increasing behavioral evidence that ToM reasoning can be affected by mood. To gain insight into the ways sad mood may affect the underlying mechanisms of ToM reasoning, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as dysphoric (N = 16) and non-dysphoric (N = 24) participants reasoned about a protagonist's true or false beliefs about an object's location. Results showed significant group effects on early components of the ERP - individuals in the dysphoric group showed greater amplitudes for the anterior N1 and N2/P2 components relative to those in the non-dysphoric group. Later in the ERP, non-dysphoric individuals showed evidence of neurocognitive dissociations between true and false belief. Dysphoric individuals, however, did not show evidence for these later dissociations. This evidence suggests that dysphoria may be associated with effortful reasoning about other's mental states, even when that effort is not necessary (i.e., when reasoning about true beliefs). We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding how mood affects ToM reasoning and for how especially deliberative ToM processing in dysphoria may lead to social difficulties.

The seductive allure of the brain: Dualism and lay perceptions of neuroscience

Laypeople prefer brain explanations of behavior (Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, & Gray, 2008). We suggest that this preference arises from 'intuitive Dualism'. For the Dualist, mentalistic causation elicits a mind-body dissonance, as it suggests that the immaterial mind affects the body. Brain causation attributes behavior to the body, so it alleviates the dissonance, hence, preferred. We thus predict stronger brain preference for epistemic traits - those perceived as least material, even when no explanation is required. To test this prediction, participants diagnosed clinical conditions using matched brain- and behavioral tests. Experiments 1-2 showed that epistemic traits elicited stronger preference for brain tests. Experiment 3 confirmed that epistemic traits are perceived as immaterial. Experiment 4 showed that, the less material the trait seems, the stronger the surprise (possibly, dissonance) and brain preference. Results offer new insights into public perception of science, the role of intuitive Dualism, and the seductive allure of neuroscience.

Single-neuronal predictions of others' beliefs in humans

Human social behaviour crucially depends on our ability to reason about others. This capacity for theory of mind has a vital role in social cognition because it enables us not only to form a detailed understanding of the hidden thoughts and beliefs of other individuals but also to understand that they may differ from our own^1-3. Although a number of areas in the human brain have been linked to social reasoning^4,5 and its disruption across a variety of psychosocial disorders^6-8, the basic cellular mechanisms that underlie human theory of mind remain undefined. Here, using recordings from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others' beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations. By further following their encoding dynamics, we show how these cells represent the contents of the others' beliefs and accurately predict whether they are true or false. We also show how they track inferred beliefs from another's specific perspective and how their activities relate to behavioural performance. Together, these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another's beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.

Theory of mind and schizotypy: A meta-analysis

Schizotypy is a multi-dimensional personality construct that putatively indicates an individual's liability to psychosis. Schizophrenia is associated with significant deficits in theory of mind (ToM). However, previous studies investigating the relationship between schizotypy and ToM provided inconsistent findings. Following the systematic review of all relevant schizotypy studies between January 1, 1980 and June 30, 2019, a meta-analysis of the relationship between ToM and schizotypy was conducted. Current meta-analysis included 24 studies consisting of 4162 healthy individuals. Overall, there was a significant but a small negative relationship between ToM and schizotypy (d = -0.23, CI = -0.14-0.33). Schizotypy scores were negatively associated with both reasoning (d = -0.24, CI = -0.11-0.38) and decoding (d = -0.21, CI = -0.09-0.32) aspects of ToM. The relationship between ToM and schizotypy was more significant in the studies using extreme-group design (d = -0.31, CI = -0.17-0.45) than non-extreme-group design (d = -0.17, CI = -0.04-0.29). ToM abnormalities were significantly related to both positive and negative schizotypy. Current findings support the continuum between schizotpy and schizophrenia. ToM abnormalities might be vulnerability markers for psychosis.

The neural and cognitive mechanisms of knowledge attribution: An EEG study

Despite the ubiquity of knowledge attribution in human social cognition, its associated neural and cognitive mechanisms are poorly documented. A wealth of converging evidence in cognitive neuroscience has identified independent perspective-taking and inhibitory processes for belief attribution, but the extent to which these processes are shared by knowledge attribution isn't presently understood. Here, we present the findings of an EEG study designed to directly address this shortcoming. These findings suggest that belief attribution is not a component process in knowledge attribution, contra a standard attitude taken by philosophers. Instead, observed differences in P3b amplitude indicate that knowledge attribution doesn't recruit the strong self-perspective inhibition characteristic of belief attribution. However, both belief and knowledge attribution were observed to display a late slow wave widely associated with mental state attribution, indicating that knowledge attribution also shares in more general processing of others' mental states. These results provide a new perspective both on how we think about knowledge attribution, as well as Theory of Mind processes generally.

Electrophysiological dynamics of false belief understanding and complementation syntax in school-aged children: Oscillatory brain activity and event-related potentials

A large body of research in developmental psychology has been devoted to the ongoing debate over which aspects of language are fundamental to false belief understanding (FBU). A key proposal from de Villiers and colleagues proposes the essential role of complementation syntax in FBU development. The current study, using scalp electroencephalography (EEG), addressed one opposing hypothesis purporting that complementation is redundant to FBU by characterizing the electrophysiological correlates of FBU and complementation syntax in school-age children. Time-frequency decomposition showed robust parieto-occipital low beta (12-16 Hz) power reduction in the belief versus complementation conditions. This divergence was also supported by event-related potentials (ERPs), with parieto-occipital late slow waves around 600 to 900 ms distinguishing belief and complementation conditions. The false belief condition generated the lowest behavioral response accuracy, suggesting that it is the most challenging condition. Together, the current findings provide evidence showing that complementation is not redundant to FBU.

Love at First Glance but Not After Deep Consideration: The Impact of Sexually Appealing Advertising on Product Preferences

In advertising studies, the impact of sexually appealing advertisements (hereafter “ads”) on consumers’ product preferences is highly controversial. This paper explores (1) how such ads affect consumers’ product preferences at the gazing stage (initial stage of exposure to the ad) and evaluation stage (final product preference), and (2) which type of product (utilitarian vs. hedonic) is more suited to such ads. We used an electroencephalogram to record participants’ product preferences at the gazing stage and self-reported product preferences at the evaluation stage. The results indicated that participants preferred ads with high sex appeal at the gazing stage and ads with low sex appeal at the evaluation stage. Further, compared to utilitarian products, hedonic products were more suited to sexually appealing ads. The findings suggest that the effect of such ads on consumers’ product preferences varies depending on their cognitive stage and the type of product advertised.

The neural basis of belief-attribution across the lifespan: False-belief reasoning and the N400 effect

The current study examined how social cognition – specifically, belief-state processing – changes across the lifespan, using a large sample (N = 309) of participants aged 10–86 years. Participants completed an event-related brain potential study in which they listened to stories involving a character who held either a true- or false-belief about the location of an object, and then acted in a manner consistent or inconsistent to this belief-state. Analysis of the N400 revealed that when the character held a true-belief, inconsistent outcomes led to a more negative-going N400 waveform than consistent outcomes. In contrast, when the character held a false-belief, consistent outcomes led to a more negative-going N400 waveform than inconsistent outcomes, indicating that participants interpreted the character's actions according to their own more complete knowledge of reality. Importantly, this egocentric bias was not modulated by age in an early time window (200–400 msec post-stimulus onset), meaning that initial processing is grounded in reality, irrespective of age. However, this egocentric effect was correlated with age in a later time window (400–600 msec post-stimulus onset), as older adults continued to consider the story events according to their own knowledge of reality, but younger participants had now switched to accommodate the character's perspective. In a final 600–1000 msec time window, this age modulation was no longer present. Interestingly, results suggested that this extended egocentric processing in older adults was not the result of domain-general cognitive declines, as no significant relationship was found with executive functioning (inhibitory control and working memory).

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.

Dissociating neural signatures of mental state retrodiction and classification based on facial expressions

Posed facial expressions of actors have often been used as stimuli to induce mental state inferences, in order to investigate ‘Theory of Mind’ processes. However, such stimuli make it difficult to determine whether perceivers are using a basic or more elaborated mentalizing strategy. The current study used as stimuli covert recordings of target individuals who viewed various emotional expressions, which caused them to spontaneously mimic these expressions. Perceivers subsequently judged these subtle emotional expressions of the targets: in one condition (‘classification’) participants were instructed to classify the target’s expression (i.e. match it to a sample) and in another condition (‘retrodicting’) participants were instructed to retrodict (i.e. infer which emotional expression the target was viewing). When instructed to classify, participants showed more prevalent activations in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) at earlier and mid-latency ERP components N170, P200 and P300–600. By contrast, when instructed to retrodict participants showed enhanced late frontal and fronto-temporal ERPs (N800–1000), with more sustained activity over the right than the left hemisphere. These findings reveal different cortical processes involved when retrodicting about a facial expression compared to merely classifying it, despite comparable performance on the behavioral task.

Age-related decline in emotional perspective-taking: Its effect on the late positive potential

Aging is associated with changes in cognitive and affective functioning, which likely shape older adults' social cognition. As the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying age differences in social abilities remain poorly understood, the present study aims to extend the research in this field. To this purpose, younger (n = 30; M_age = 26.6), middle-aged (n = 30; M_age = 48.4), and older adults (n = 29; M_age = 64.5) performed a task designed to assess affective perspective-taking, during an EEG recording. In this task, participants decided whether a target facial expression of emotion (FEE) was congruent or incongruent with that of a masked intervener of a previous scenario, which portrayed a neutral or an emotional scene. Older adults showed worse performance in comparison to the other groups. Regarding electrophysiological results, while younger and middle-aged adults showed higher late positive potentials (LPPs) after FEEs congruent with previous scenarios than after incongruent FEEs, older adults had similar amplitudes after both. This insensitivity of older adults' LPPs in differentiating congruent from incongruent emotional context-target FEE may be related to their difficulty in generating information about others' inner states and using that information in social interactions.

Do you know what I'm thinking? Temporal and spatial brain activity during a theory-of-mind task in children with autism

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First MEG study of neural underpinnings of theory of mind differences in autism.

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Children with autism show decreased LTPJ activity from 300 to 375 and 425 to 500 ms.

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Children with autism also show increased RIFG activity from 325 to 375 ms.

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Co-incident lower LTPJ and higher RIFG activity implies compensatory use of RIFG.

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Executive functions may augment impaired theory of mind in autism.

The social impairments observed in children with autism spectrum disorder are thought to arise in part from deficits in theory of mind, the ability to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings. To determine the temporal-spatial dynamics of brain activity underlying these atypical theory-of-mind processes, we used magnetoencephalography to characterize the sequence of functional brain patterns (i.e. when and where) related to theory-of-mind reasoning in 19 high-functioning children with autism compared to 22 age- and sex-matched typically-developing children aged 8–12 during a false-belief (theory-of-mind) task. While task performance did not differ between the two groups, children with autism showed reduced activation in the left temporoparietal junction between 300–375 and 425–500 ms, as well as increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus from 325 to 375 ms compared to controls. The overlap in decreased temporoparietal junction activity and increased right inferior frontal gyrus activation from 325 to 375 ms suggests that in children with autism, the right inferior frontal gyrus may compensate for deficits in the temporoparietal junction, a neural theory-of-mind network hub. As the right inferior frontal gyrus is involved in inhibitory control, this finding suggests that children with autism rely on executive functions to bolster their false-belief understanding.

Exploring the role of self/other perspective-shifting in theory of mind with behavioural and EEG measures

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to compute and attribute mental states to oneself and other people. This study sought to assess the extent of differentiation between "Self" and "Other" in ToM processes, and, of particular importance, the key role of perspective-shifting between "Self" and "Other". Utilizing a newly established false-belief paradigm in a matched design, healthy adult participants completed the task whilst behavioural measures (response times, error rates) and electrophysiological (EEG) recordings were taken. Results revealed that self-oriented belief-attribution was faster and less error-prone than other-oriented belief-attribution, and demonstrated a key role of perspective-shifting. Perspective shifts from Self-to-Other resulted in longer response times and more errors than shifts from Other-to-Self. In contrast, no difference between self and other probes was found in no perspective-shift trials. Reflecting this, EEG recordings showed a significant interaction between Perspective-Shifting and Probe Type at an early onset across right parieto/occipito-lateral areas (250 ms post-stimulus onset), and across frontal-central areas from 500 ms post-stimulus onset, indicating the key role of these areas in ToM engagement. Results demonstrate that "Self" and "Other" can be distinguished at a behavioural level, and highlight the critical role of "Perspective-Shifting" in ToM processes.

Neural correlates of children's emotion understanding

This study aimed to develop an EEG paradigm to identify neural correlates of emotion understanding in children. In Experiment 1, children took part in an emotional story task. In Experiment 2, children completed an emotional task and a physical story task Late Positive Potentials (LPP) were demonstrated in response to emotional content in both studies. Together, The study demonstrates the potential value of the LPP as a flexible probe for studying children's emotion understanding and encourages further work into the specificity versus generality of cognitive processes underpinning the LPP in social information processing.

Oscillatory brain activity differentially reflects false belief understanding and complementation syntax processing

False belief understanding (FBU) enables people to consider conflicting beliefs about the same situation. While language has been demonstrated to be a correlate of FBU, there is still controversy about the extent to which a specific aspect of language, complementation syntax, is a necessary condition for FBU. The present study tested an important notion from the debate proposing that complementation syntax task is redundant to FBU measures. Specifically, we examined electrophysiological correlates of false belief, false complementation, and their respective true conditions in adults using electroencephalography (EEG), focusing on indices of oscillatory brain activity and large-scale connectivity. The results showed strong modulation of parieto-occipital alpha (8-12 Hz) and beta (13-20 Hz) power by the experimental manipulations, with heightened sustained alpha power reflective of effortful internal processing observed in the false compared to the true conditions and reliable beta power reductions sensitive to mentalizing and/or syntactic demands in the belief versus the complementation conditions. In addition, higher coupling between parieto-occipital regions and widespread frontal sites in the beta band was found for the false-belief condition selectively. The result of divergence in beta oscillatory activity and in connectivity between false belief and false complementation does not support the redundancy hypothesis.

Relationship between insight and theory of mind in schizophrenia: A meta-analysis

Poor insight in schizophrenia has been associated with executive dysfunction and deficits in general cognitive ability. The overall outcome of available neurocognitive studies suggests that there is a significant but modest relationship between cognitive deficits and poor insight in schizophrenia. However, social cognitive abilities, particularly, theory of mind (ToM), might also play a role in poor insight in schizophrenia. A novel meta-analysis of the relationship between ToM and insight in schizophrenia was conducted. Current meta-analysis included 16 studies including 1085 patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. There was a significant association between ToM and clinical insight (r=0.28, CI=0.20-0.36). By contrast, there was no significant relationship between ToM and cognitive insight. Current findings suggest that there is a small but significant relationship between ToM and clinical insight in schizophrenia. ToM impairment is one of the factors contributing to poor insight in schizophrenia.

Neural correlates of "Theory of Mind" in very preterm born children

Very preterm (VPT) birth (<32 weeks' gestational age) has been implicated in social-cognitive deficits including Theory of Mind (ToM); the ability to attribute mental states to others and understand that those beliefs can differ from one's own or reality. The neural bases for ToM deficits in VPT born children have not been examined. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) for its excellent spatial and temporal resolution to determine the neural underpinnings of ToM in 24 VPT and 24 full-term born (FT) children (7-13 years). VPT children performed more poorly on neuropsychological measures of ToM but not inhibition. In the MEG task, both FT children and VPT children recruited regions involved in false belief processing such as the rIFG (VPT: 275-350 ms, FT: 250-375 ms) and left inferior temporal gyrus (VPT: 375-450 ms, FT: 325-375 ms) and right fusiform gyrus (VPT: 150-200 ms, FT: 175-250 ms). The rIPL (included in the temporal-parietal junction) was recruited in FT children (475-575 ms) and the lTPJ in VPT children (500-575 ms). However, activations in all regions were reduced in the VPT compared to the FT group. We suggest that with increasing social-cognitive demands such as varying the type of scenarios in the standardized measure of ToM, reduced activations in the rIFG and TPJ in the VPT group may reflect the decreased performance. With access to both spatial and temporal information, we discuss the role of domain general and specific regions of the ToM network in both groups. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5577-5589, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Autistic Traits Affect P300 Response to Unexpected Events, regardless of Mental State Inferences

Limited use of contextual information has been suggested as a way of understanding cognition in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it has also been argued that individuals with ASD may have difficulties inferring others' mental states. Here, we examined how individuals with different levels of autistic traits respond to contextual deviations by measuring event-related potentials that reflect context usage. The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) was used to quantify autistic-like traits in 28 university students, and 19 participants were defined as Low or High AQ groups. To additionally examine inferences about mental state, two belief conditions (with or without false belief) were included. Participants read short stories in which the final sentence included either an expected or an unexpected word and rated the word's degree of deviation from expectation. P300 waveform analysis revealed that unexpected words were associated with larger P300 waveforms for the Low AQ group, but smaller P300 responses in the High AQ group. Additionally, AQ social skill subscores were positively correlated with evaluation times in the Unexpected condition, whether a character's belief was false or not. This suggests that autistic traits can affect responses to unexpected events, possibly because of decreased availability of context information.

Physical coldness enhances racial in-group bias in empathy: Electrophysiological evidence

Empathy for others' pain plays a key role in prosocial behavior and is influenced by intergroup relationships. Increasing evidence suggests greater empathy for racial in-group than out-group individuals' pain and the racial in-group bias undergoes sociocultural and biological influences. The present study further investigated whether and how physical environments influence racial in-group bias in empathy by testing the hypothesis that sensory experiences of physical coldness versus warmth enhance differential empathic neural responses to racial in-group vs. out-group individuals' suffering. We recorded event-related brain potentials to painful versus neutral expressions of same-race and other-race faces when participants held a cold or warm pack. We found that brain activity in the N2 (200-340ms) and P3 (400-600ms) time windows over the frontal/central region was positively shifted by painful (vs. neutral) expressions. Moreover, the N2/P3 empathic neural responses were significantly larger for same-race than other-race faces in the cold but not in the warm condition. Moreover, subjective ratings of different temperatures in the cold vs. warm conditions predicted larger changes of racial in-group bias in empathic neural responses in the N2 time window. Our findings suggest that sensory experiences of physical coldness can strengthen emotional resonance with same-race individuals.

Theory of Mind Is Impaired in Mild to Moderate Huntington's Disease Independently from Global Cognitive Functioning

Affective “Theory of Mind” (ToM) is the specific ability to represent own and others’ emotional states and feelings. Previous studies examined affective ToM ability in patients with Huntington’s disease (HD), using the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes test” (RMET). Results were consistent in showing difficulties in inferring complex mental states from photographs of people even in the early stage of HD. However, there has been no agreement as to whether or not cognitive impairments in HD population might have contributed to poor performance on the RMET test. The aim of the present study was to assess whether the affective ToM ability was impaired in the mild to moderate stages of HD, and whether there was an association between compromised ToM ability and the presence of cognitive impairment. We evaluated ToM by means of RMET and global cognitive functioning by means of the MoCA questionnaire in 15 HD patients and 15 healthy subjects (HS). Both groups were matched for age and level of education. Our study showed that the ability to judge a person’s mental states from a picture of their eyes was impaired in HD patients compared to normal population. Indeed, HD subjects gave the 34% of correct responses on RMET, whereas healthy control subjects’ percentage of correct responses was 71%. Furthermore, this impairment was not correlated with global cognitive functioning except for the visuospatial task. These results show that RMET might represent a valid instrument to assess affective ToM ability in HD patients in the mild to moderate stages of the disease, independently from their cognitive status. Since it is known that HD patients, in addition to motor symptoms, suffer from cognitive deficits, including memory and executive impairments, it is important to have an instrument, which is not influenced by cognitive abilities. It is possible therefore to use RMET to assess important aspects of HD patients such as their ability to recognize others’ emotions and feelings even when patients suffer from cognitive decline.

Neural correlates of judgments of learning - An ERP study on metacognition

Metacognitive assessment of performance has been revealed to be one of the most powerful predictors of human learning success and academic achievement. Yet, little is known about the functional nature of cognitive processes supporting judgments of learning (JOLs). The present study investigated the neural underpinnings of JOLs, using event-related brain potentials. Participants were presented with picture pairs and instructed to learn these pairs. After each pair, participants received a task cue, which instructed them to make a JOL (the likelihood of remembering the target when only presented with the cue) or to make a control judgment. Results revealed that JOLs were accompanied by a positive slow wave over medial frontal areas and a bilateral negative slow wave over occipital areas between 350ms and 700ms following the task cue. The results are discussed with respect to recent accounts on the neural correlates of judgments of learning.

The Neural Correlates Underlying Belief Reasoning for Self and for Others: Evidence from ERPs

Belief reasoning is typical mental state reasoning in theory of mind (ToM). Although previous studies have explored the neural bases of belief reasoning, the neural correlates of belief reasoning for self and for others are rarely addressed. The decoupling mechanism of distinguishing the mental state of others from one’s own is essential for ToM processing. To address the electrophysiological bases underlying the decoupling mechanism, the present event-related potential study compared the time course of neural activities associated with belief reasoning for self and for others when the belief belonging to self was consistent or inconsistent with others. Results showed that during a 450–600 ms period, belief reasoning for self elicited a larger late positive component (LPC) than for others when beliefs were inconsistent with each other. The LPC divergence is assumed to reflect the categorization of agencies in ToM processes.

Resting-State Subjective Experience and EEG Biomarkers Are Associated with Sleep-Onset Latency

Difficulties initiating sleep are common in several disorders, including insomnia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These disorders are prevalent, bearing significant societal and financial costs which require the consideration of new treatment strategies and a better understanding of the physiological and cognitive processes surrounding the time of preparing for sleep or falling asleep. Here, we search for neuro-cognitive associations in the resting state and examine their relevance for predicting sleep-onset latency using multi-level mixed models. Multiple EEG recordings were obtained from healthy male participants (N = 13) during a series of 5 min eyes-closed resting-state trials (in total, n = 223) followed by a period-varying in length up to 30 min-that either allowed subjects to transition into sleep ("sleep trials," n sleep = 144) or was ended while they were still awake ("wake trials," n wake = 79). After both eyes-closed rest, sleep and wake trials, subjective experience was assessed using the Amsterdam Resting-State Questionnaire (ARSQ). Our data revealed multiple associations between eyes-closed rest alpha and theta oscillations and ARSQ-dimensions Discontinuity of Mind, Self, Theory of Mind, Planning, and Sleepiness. The sleep trials showed that the transition toward the first sleep stage exclusively affected subjective experiences related to Theory of Mind, Planning, and Sleepiness. Importantly, sleep-onset latency was negatively associated both with eyes-closed rest ratings on the ARSQ dimension of Sleepiness and with the long-range temporal correlations of parietal theta oscillations derived by detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). These results could be relevant to the development of personalized tools that help evaluate the success of falling asleep based on measures of resting-state cognition and EEG biomarkers.

Thinking about the thoughts of others; temporal and spatial neural activation during false belief reasoning

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand the perspectives, mental states and beliefs of others in order to anticipate their behaviour and is therefore crucial to social interactions. Although fMRI has been widely used to establish the neural networks implicated in ToM, little is known about the timing of ToM-related brain activity. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure the neural processes underlying ToM, as MEG provides very accurate timing and excellent spatial localization of brain processes. We recorded MEG activity during a false belief task, a reliable measure of ToM, in twenty young adults (10 females). MEG data were recorded in a 151 sensor CTF system (MISL, Coquitlam, BC) and data were co-registered to each participant's MRI (Siemens 3T) for source reconstruction. We found stronger right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) activations in the false belief condition from 150ms to 225ms, in the right precuneus from 275ms to 375ms, in the right inferior frontal gyrus from 200ms to 300ms and the superior frontal gyrus from 300ms to 400ms. Our findings extend the literature by demonstrating the timing and duration of neural activity in the main regions involved in the "mentalizing" network, showing that activations related to false belief in adults are predominantly right lateralized and onset around 100ms. The sensitivity of MEG will allow us to determine spatial and temporal differences in the brain processes in ToM in younger populations or those who demonstrate deficits in this ability.

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.

On the Role of Mentalizing Processes in Aesthetic Appreciation: An ERP Study

We used event-related brain potentials to explore the impact of mental perspective taking on processes of aesthetic appreciation of visual art. Participants (non-experts) were first presented with information about the life and attitudes of a fictitious artist. Subsequently, they were cued trial-wise to make an aesthetic judgment regarding an image depicting a piece of abstract art either from their own perspective or from the imagined perspective of the fictitious artist [i.e., theory of mind (ToM) condition]. Positive self-referential judgments were made more quickly and negative self-referential judgments were made more slowly than the corresponding judgments from the imagined perspective. Event-related potential analyses revealed significant differences between the two tasks both within the preparation period (i.e., during the cue-stimulus interval) and within the stimulus presentation period. For the ToM condition we observed a relative centro-parietal negativity during the preparation period (700-330 ms preceding picture onset) and a relative centro-parietal positivity during the stimulus presentation period (700-1100 ms after stimulus onset). These findings suggest that different subprocesses are involved in aesthetic appreciation and judgment of visual abstract art from one's own vs. from another person's perspective.

Conversation electrified: ERP correlates of speech act recognition in underspecified utterances

The ability to recognize speech acts (verbal actions) in conversation is critical for everyday interaction. However, utterances are often underspecified for the speech act they perform, requiring listeners to rely on the context to recognize the action. The goal of this study was to investigate the time-course of auditory speech act recognition in action-underspecified utterances and explore how sequential context (the prior action) impacts this process. We hypothesized that speech acts are recognized early in the utterance to allow for quick transitions between turns in conversation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants listened to spoken dialogues and performed an action categorization task. The dialogues contained target utterances that each of which could deliver three distinct speech acts depending on the prior turn. The targets were identical across conditions, but differed in the type of speech act performed and how it fit into the larger action sequence. The ERP results show an early effect of action type, reflected by frontal positivities as early as 200 ms after target utterance onset. This indicates that speech act recognition begins early in the turn when the utterance has only been partially processed. Providing further support for early speech act recognition, actions in highly constraining contexts did not elicit an ERP effect to the utterance-final word. We take this to show that listeners can recognize the action before the final word through predictions at the speech act level. However, additional processing based on the complete utterance is required in more complex actions, as reflected by a posterior negativity at the final word when the speech act is in a less constraining context and a new action sequence is initiated. These findings demonstrate that sentence comprehension in conversational contexts crucially involves recognition of verbal action which begins as soon as it can.

Electrophysiological evidence of separate pathways for the perception of depth and 3D objects

Previous studies have investigated the neural mechanism of 3D perception, but the neural distinction between 3D-objects and depth processing remains unclear. In the present study, participants viewed three types of graphics (planar graphics, perspective drawings, and 3D objects) while event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded. The ERP results revealed the following: (1) 3D objects elicited a larger and delayed N1 component than the other two types of stimuli; (2) during the P2 time window, significant differences between 3D objects and the perspective drawings were found mainly over a group of electrode sites in the left lateral occipital region; and (3) during the N2 complex, differences between planar graphics and perspective drawings were found over a group of electrode sites in the right hemisphere, whereas differences between perspective drawings and 3D objects were observed at another group of electrode sites in the left hemisphere. These findings support the claim that depth processing and object identification might be processed by separate pathways and at different latencies.

Characterizing an ERP correlate of intentions understanding using a sequential comic strips paradigm

Chronometric properties of theory of mind and intentions understanding more specifically are well documented. Notably, it was demonstrated using magnetoencephalography that the brain regions involved were recruited as soon as 200 ms post-stimulus. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to characterize an electrophysiological marker of attribution of intentions. We also explored the robustness of this ERP signature under two conditions corresponding to either explicit instructions to focus on others' intentions or implicit instructions with no reference to mental states. Two matched groups of 16 healthy volunteers each received either explicit or no instructions about intentions and performed a nonverbal attribution of intentions task based on sequential four-image comic strips depicting either intentional or physical causality. A bilateral posterior positive component, ranging from 250 to 650 ms post-stimulus, showed greater amplitude in intentional than in physical condition (the intention ERP effect). This effect occurs during the third image only, suggesting that it reflects the integration of information depicted in the third image to the contextual cues given by the first two. The intention effect was similar in the two groups of subjects. Overall, our results identify a clear ERP marker of the first hundreds of milliseconds of intentions processing probably related to a contextual integrative mechanism and suggest its robustness by showing its blindness to task demands manipulation.

Empathy predicts false belief reasoning ability: evidence from the N400

Interpreting others' actions relies on an understanding of their current mental state. Emerging research has begun to identify a number of factors that give rise to individual differences in this ability. We report an event-related brain potential study where participants (N = 28) read contexts that described a character having a true belief (TB) or false belief (FB) about an object's location. A second sentence described where that character would look for the object. Critically, this sentence included a sentence-final noun that was either consistent or inconsistent with the character's belief. Participants also completed the Empathy Quotient questionnaire. Analysis of the N400 revealed that when the character held a TB about the object's location, the N400 waveform was more negative-going for belief inconsistent vs belief consistent critical words. However, when the character held an FB about the object's location the opposite pattern was found. Intriguingly, correlations between the N400 inconsistency effect and individuals' empathy scores showed a significant correlation for FB but not TB. This suggests that people who are high in empathy can successfully interpret events according to the character's FB, while low empathizers bias their interpretation of events to their own egocentric view.

Belief and sign, true and false: the unique of false belief reasoning

For a long time, a controversy has been proposed that whether the process of theory of mind is a result of domain-specific or domain-general changes (Wellman in The handbook of childhood cognitive development. Blackwell Publication, New Jersey, 2011). This event-related potential study explored the neural time course of domain-general and domain-specific components in belief reasoning. Fourteen participants completed location transfer false belief (FB), true belief (TB), false sign (FS) and true sign (TS) tasks, in which two pictures told a story related to a dog that ran from a green into a red box. In the TB and FB tasks, a boy saw or did not see the transfer of the dog, respectively. In the FS and TS tasks, an arrow that pointed to the green box either altered its direction to the red box or did not alter following the transfer of the dog. Participants then inferred where the boy thought of, or the arrow indicated the location of the dog. FB and TB reasoning elicited lower N2 amplitudes than FS and TS reasoning, which is associated with domain-general components, the detection, and classification. The late slow wave (LSW) for FB was more positive at frontal, central, and parietal sites than FS because of the domain-specific component involved in FB reasoning. However, the LSW was less positive for TB than for FB but did not differ from the TS condition, which implies that mental representation might not be involved in TB reasoning.

A nexus model of the temporal-parietal junction

The temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) has been proposed to support either specifically social functions or non-specific processes of cognition such as memory and attention. To account for diverse prior findings, we propose a nexus model for TPJ function: overlap of basic processes produces novel secondary functions at their convergence. We present meta-analytic evidence that is consistent with the anatomical convergence of attention, memory, language, and social processing in the TPJ, leading to a higher-order role in the creation of a social context for behavior. The nexus model accounts for recent examples of TPJ contributions specifically to decision making in a social context and provides a potential reconciliation for competing claims about TPJ function.

What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing

The combined knowledge of word meanings and grammatical rules does not allow a listener to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker’s utterance. Pragmatic inferences on the part of the listener are also required. The present work focuses on the processing of ironic utterances (imagine a slow day being described as “really productive”) because these clearly require the listener to go beyond the linguistic code. Such utterances are advantageous experimentally because they can serve as their own controls in the form of literal sentences (now imagine an active day being described as “really productive”) as we employ techniques from electrophysiology (EEG). Importantly, the results confirm previous ERP findings showing that irony processing elicits an enhancement of the P600 component (Regel et al., 2011). More original are the findings drawn from Time Frequency Analysis (TFA) and especially the increase of power in the gamma band in the 280–400 time-window, which points to an integration among different streams of information relatively early in the comprehension of an irony. This represents a departure from traditional accounts of language processing which generally view pragmatic inferences as late-arriving. We propose that these results indicate that unification operations between the linguistic code and contextual information play a critical role throughout the course of irony processing and earlier than previously thought.

Same or different? ERP correlates of pretense and false belief reasoning in children

Pretend play, emerging at about 18 months, and explicit false belief (FB) understanding, arising around 4 years, constitute two pivotal milestones in the development of a Theory of Mind since both involve the ability to separate real from non-real content. The developmental lag has evoked vivid discussion with respect to whether or not pretense (PT) involves a metarepresentational understanding similar to FB. However, in children PT and FB have not yet been contrasted on a neural level to reveal whether they are subserved by the same neurocognitive mechanism. Therefore, the present event-related potential (ERP) study compared PT to a FB and to a non-mental control condition in 6- to 8-year-old children. Results revealed distinct ERP components for PT and FB. PT elicited a parietal P2, which was assumed to reflect the detection of incongruence, and a negative frontal slow wave (290-600 ms), which was associated with the identification of the intention underlying the pretend behavior. In contrast, FB evoked the characteristic positive fronto-central late slow wave (290-920 ms) that is supposed to indicate metarepresentation. Further, the broad distribution of the anterior slow-wave patterns associated with PT and FB reasoning was assumed to reflect the ongoing structural development and neural specialization of the respective areas, indicating the developmental progress in conceptualizing the mental domain. Given the differences in latency, polarity, and topography, PT and FB seem to rely on distinct neural substrates in children. The early negative frontal slow wave indicates that for PT reasoning children may use simple mentalizing processes such as intention processing, whereas the late positive slow-wave shows that for FB children may engage in metarepresentational processing. Therefore, the present findings seem to substantiate theoretical accounts postulating simple mentalistic reasoning for PT in children.

Reprint of "Affective picture processing as a function of preceding picture valence: an ERP analysis"

Event-related brain potential (ERP) studies consistently revealed that a relatively early (early posterior negativity; EPN) and a late (late positive potential; LPP) ERP component differentiate between emotional and neutral picture stimuli. Two studies examined the processing of emotional stimuli when preceded either by pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant context images. In both studies, distinct streams of six pictures were shown. In Study 1, hedonic context was alternated randomly across the 180 picture streams. In Study 2, hedonic context sequences were blocked, resulting in 60 preceding sequences of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant context valence, respectively. The main finding was that the valence of the preceding picture sequence had no significant effect on the emotional modulation of the EPN and LPP components. However, previous results were replicated in that emotional stimulus processing was associated with larger EPN and LPP components as compared to neutral pictures. These findings suggest that the prioritized processing of emotional stimuli is primarily driven by the valence of the current picture.