Research Unit on Theory of Mind, Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and Department of Neuroradiology, Scientific Institute and University Hospital San Raffaele, L.go A. Gemelli, 1, 20123 Milano, Italy.
Neuropsychologia. 2010 Jul;48(9):2586-94. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.05.005. Epub 2010 May 8.
Theory of Mind--ToM, the capacity to understand one's own and other people's mental states and to refer to them to foresee and explain the behaviour--relies upon a circumscribed neural system: the posterior end of the superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), the adjacent temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), the temporal pole (TP), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the adjacent paracingulate cortex. To our knowledge, the neural basis of mentalizing has not yet been studied in a developmental perspective covering old age, so the aim of this work is to compare the neural basis of a specific aspect of ToM, the mindreading ability through the eyes, in healthy young and old subjects. Two groups of healthy adults (young: 25.2 years; old: 65.2 years) were submitted to an fMRI scanning while performing the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, which requires the attribution of a mental state to the other person focussing only on the eye-gaze. There was no difference in the behavioural performances between young and old and both groups of subjects activated the pSTS and the TP, thus indicating that old people show no impairment of mentalizing circuits. However, a relevant shifting of the neural circuit implied in each group to solve the task emerged. Old subjects showed a more bilateral activation of frontal areas and a stronger involvement of the linguistic components of the mirror neuron system (i.e. area 44), as compared to young. Both young and old participants activated the non-linguistic components of the mirror neuron system, such as area 6. These findings are discussed taking into account the recent literature dealing with cognitive functions during normal aging.
心理理论——ToM，即理解自己和他人心理状态并参照这些状态来预测和解释行为的能力——依赖于一个特定的神经回路：颞上沟后端（pSTS）、邻近的颞顶联合（TPJ）、颞极（TP）、内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）和邻近的旁扣带皮层。据我们所知，心理理论的神经基础尚未在涵盖老年的发展视角中进行研究，因此这项工作的目的是比较健康的年轻和老年受试者在心理阅读能力这一特定方面的心理理论的神经基础。两组健康成年人（年轻组：25.2 岁；老年组：65.2 岁）在进行“通过眼睛解读思维”测试时接受 fMRI 扫描，该测试要求仅通过注视眼睛来将一种心理状态归因于他人。年轻组和老年组在行为表现上没有差异，两组受试者都激活了 pSTS 和 TP，这表明老年人的心理理论回路没有受损。然而，为了解决任务，每个组所涉及的神经回路都发生了明显的转变。与年轻组相比，老年组显示出更广泛的额区双侧激活和镜像神经元系统语言成分（即区域 44）的更强参与。年轻组和老年组参与者都激活了镜像神经元系统的非语言成分，如区域 6。这些发现考虑到有关正常衰老过程中认知功能的最新文献进行了讨论。
