Lin Nan, Bi Yanchao, Zhao Ying, Luo Chunming, Li Xingshan
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Brain Lang. 2015 Feb;141:1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.11.004. Epub 2014 Dec 11.
The theory-of-mind (ToM) network refers to a specific group of brain regions implicated in the thinking of people's mental states. It remains unclear how this network contributes to verb comprehension. In the present study, we compared brain activations evoked by verbs that refer to social actions, private actions, and nonhuman events. All classic regions of the ToM network, including the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) whose activation during word comprehension is typically interpreted as the processing of motion properties, showed stronger activations to social action verbs than the others. These findings indicate that the ToM network is involved in the processing of social/mental knowledge of verb meanings. Furthermore, the activation of the pSTS during word comprehension mainly reflects the processing of social/mental properties but not that of biological-motion properties.
心理理论（ToM）网络指的是一组特定的脑区，这些脑区与对他人心理状态的思考有关。目前尚不清楚该网络如何促进动词理解。在本研究中，我们比较了指代社会行为、个人行为和非人类事件的动词所引发的大脑激活情况。心理理论网络的所有经典区域，包括颞上沟后部（pSTS），其在单词理解过程中的激活通常被解释为对动作属性的处理，与其他区域相比，该区域对社会行为动词的激活更强。这些发现表明，心理理论网络参与了动词意义的社会/心理知识的处理。此外，单词理解过程中pSTS的激活主要反映社会/心理属性的处理，而非生物动作属性的处理。
