Shamay-Tsoory Simone G, Tibi-Elhanany Yasmin, Aharon-Peretz Judith
Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Soc Neurosci. 2006;1(3-4):149-66. doi: 10.1080/17470910600985589.
Lesion and neuroimaging studies have implicated the medial frontal lobes as playing an important role in our ability to predict other people's behavior by attributing to them mental states, such as beliefs, intention and emotion (termed "Theory of Mind"; ToM). However, recent studies have challenged these findings by highlighting the role of the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) in ToM. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that the ventromedial (VM) prefrontal cortex plays a unique role in affective ToM reasoning rather than a general role in ToM. We compared the performance of patients with lesions localized either in the VM, dorsolateral, TPJ, or superior parietal to healthy controls, with a battery of naturalistic affective and cognitive ToM stories (about false beliefs, false attribution, irony and lies). Patients with VM damage were impaired at providing appropriate mental state explanations for the affective ToM stories, compared to healthy controls and patients with posterior damage. In the VM group, performance in the affective ToM was significantly impaired as compared to cognitive ToM stories. Furthermore, in the VM group, ratings of levels of emotionality of each story suggested that levels of affective load correlated with number of errors in the stories, indicating that the more the emotional load involved in the story the greater the difficulty posed for the subjects in this group.
病变及神经影像学研究表明，内侧额叶在我们通过赋予他人心理状态（如信念、意图和情感，即所谓的“心理理论”；ToM）来预测他人行为的能力中发挥着重要作用。然而，最近的研究通过强调颞顶联合区（TPJ）在心理理论中的作用对这些发现提出了质疑。在本研究中，我们检验了以下假设：腹内侧（VM）前额叶皮层在情感心理理论推理中发挥独特作用，而非在心理理论中发挥一般作用。我们使用一系列自然情感和认知心理理论故事（关于错误信念、错误归因、反讽和谎言），将VM、背外侧、TPJ或顶上叶有病变的患者与健康对照者的表现进行了比较。与健康对照者和后部损伤患者相比，VM损伤患者在为情感心理理论故事提供恰当的心理状态解释方面存在缺陷。在VM组中，与认知心理理论故事相比，情感心理理论的表现显著受损。此外，在VM组中，对每个故事的情感程度评分表明，情感负荷水平与故事中的错误数量相关，这表明故事中涉及的情感负荷越多，该组受试者面临的困难就越大。
