Apperly Ian A, Samson Dana, Chiavarino Claudia, Humphreys Glyn W
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2004 Dec;16(10):1773-84. doi: 10.1162/0898929042947928.
A model of the functional and anatomical basis of belief reasoning is essential for understanding the relationship between belief reasoning and other cognitive processes in both normal development and pathology. Studies of brain-damaged patients can give valuable insights into the nature of belief processing but pose unique methodological problems. The current study addresses these problems by using a nonlinguistic belief-reasoning task with substantially reduced executive demands. A case series of 12 brain-damaged patients is presented. The belief-reasoning errors of four patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex appeared to arise from these patients' executive function problems. The belief-reasoning errors of three patients with damage to the temporo-parietal junction could not easily be accounted for in this way, raising the possibility that this brain region has a necessary role in representing beliefs, rather than handling the executive demands of belief-reasoning tasks. We discuss the importance of gaining empirical evidence about the scope of ''theory of mind'' impairments, and the important role for neuropsychological studies in this project.
信念推理功能与解剖学基础的模型对于理解正常发育和病理状态下信念推理与其他认知过程之间的关系至关重要。对脑损伤患者的研究能够为信念处理的本质提供有价值的见解，但也带来了独特的方法学问题。本研究通过使用一项执行需求大幅降低的非语言信念推理任务来解决这些问题。本文呈现了一个包含12名脑损伤患者的病例系列。4名前额叶皮质受损患者的信念推理错误似乎源于这些患者的执行功能问题。3名颞顶联合区受损患者的信念推理错误无法轻易用这种方式解释，这增加了这样一种可能性，即该脑区在表征信念方面具有必要作用，而非处理信念推理任务的执行需求。我们讨论了获取关于“心理理论”损伤范围的实证证据的重要性，以及神经心理学研究在该项目中的重要作用。
