Spunt Robert P, Adolphs Ralph
California Institute of Technology, USA.
Neuroimage. 2014 Oct 1;99:301-11. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.05.023. Epub 2014 May 17.
The ability to impute mental states to others, or Theory of Mind (ToM), has been the subject of hundreds of neuroimaging studies. Although reviews and meta-analyses of these studies have concluded that ToM recruits a coherent brain network, mounting evidence suggests that this network is an abstraction based on pooling data from numerous studies, most of which use different behavioral tasks to investigate ToM. Problematically, this means that no single behavioral task can be used to reliably measure ToM Network function as currently conceived. To make ToM Network function scientifically tractable, we need standardized tasks capable of reliably measuring specific aspects of its functioning. Here, our goal is to validate the Why/How Task for this purpose. Several prior studies have found that when compared to answering how-questions about another person's behavior, answering why-questions about that same behavior activates a network that is anatomically consistent with meta-analytic definitions of the ToM Network. In the version of the Why/How Task presented here, participants answer yes/no Why (e.g., Is the person helping someone?) and How (e.g., Is the person lifting something?) questions about pretested photographs of naturalistic human behaviors. Across three fMRI studies, we show that the task elicits reliable performance measurements and modulates a left-lateralized network that is consistently localized across studies. While this network is convergent with meta-analyses of ToM studies, it is largely distinct from the network identified by the widely used False-Belief Localizer, the most common ToM task. Our new task is publicly available, and can be used as an efficient functional localizer to provide reliable identification of single-subject responses in most regions of the network. Our results validate the Why/How Task, both as a standardized protocol capable of producing maximally comparable data across studies, and as a flexible foundation for programmatic research on the neurobiological foundations of a basic manifestation of human ToM.
将心理状态归因于他人的能力，即心理理论（ToM），已经成为数百项神经影像学研究的主题。尽管对这些研究的综述和荟萃分析得出结论，认为心理理论涉及一个连贯的脑网络，但越来越多的证据表明，这个网络是基于对众多研究数据的汇总而形成的抽象概念，其中大多数研究使用不同的行为任务来探究心理理论。问题在于，这意味着目前还没有单一的行为任务能够可靠地测量当前所设想的心理理论网络功能。为了使心理理论网络功能在科学上易于处理，我们需要能够可靠测量其功能特定方面的标准化任务。在此，我们的目标是为此目的验证“为什么/如何”任务。先前的几项研究发现，与回答关于他人行为的“如何”问题相比，回答关于同一行为的“为什么”问题会激活一个在解剖学上与心理理论网络的荟萃分析定义一致的网络。在此呈现的“为什么/如何”任务版本中，参与者对经过预测试的自然人类行为照片回答“是/否”的“为什么”（例如，这个人是在帮助别人吗？）和“如何”（例如，这个人是在举东西吗？）问题。通过三项功能磁共振成像研究，我们表明该任务能得出可靠的表现测量结果，并调节一个在各研究中始终定位的左侧化网络。虽然这个网络与心理理论研究的荟萃分析结果一致，但它在很大程度上不同于广泛使用的错误信念定位任务（最常见的心理理论任务）所识别的网络。我们的新任务是公开可用的，并且可以用作一种有效的功能定位器，以在网络的大多数区域中可靠地识别个体受试者的反应。我们的结果验证了“为什么/如何”任务，它既是一种能够在各研究中产生最大程度可比数据的标准化方案，也是关于人类心理理论基本表现的神经生物学基础的系统性研究的灵活基础。
