Sabbagh Mark A, Moulson Margaret C, Harkness Kate L
Queen's University, Kingston ON, Canada.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2004 Apr;16(3):415-26. doi: 10.1162/089892904322926755.
Successful negotiation of human social interactions rests on having a theory of mind - an understanding of how others' behaviors can be understood in terms of internal mental states, such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. A core theory-of-mind skill is the ability to decode others' mental states on the basis of observable information, such as facial expressions. Although several recent studies have focused on the neural correlates of reasoning about mental states, no research has addressed the question of what neural systems underlie mental state decoding. We used dense-array event-related potentials (ERP) to show that decoding mental states from pictures of eyes is associated with an N270-400 component over inferior frontal and anterior temporal regions of the right hemisphere. Source estimation procedures suggest that orbitofrontal and medial temporal regions may underlie this ERP effect. These findings suggest that different components of everyday theory-of-mind skills may rely on dissociable neural mechanisms.
成功进行人类社交互动依赖于具备心理理论——即理解如何根据诸如信念、欲望、意图和情感等内部心理状态来理解他人的行为。心理理论的一项核心技能是基于可观察信息（如面部表情）来解读他人心理状态的能力。尽管最近有几项研究聚焦于心理状态推理的神经关联，但尚无研究探讨心理状态解码背后的神经系统问题。我们使用密集阵列事件相关电位（ERP）来表明，从眼睛图片中解码心理状态与右半球额下回和颞叶前部区域的N270 - 400成分相关。源估计程序表明眶额和内侧颞叶区域可能是这种ERP效应的基础。这些发现表明，日常心理理论技能的不同成分可能依赖于可分离的神经机制。
