Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Austria.
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Austria; Neuroscience Institute, Christian Doppler Clinic, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
Neuroimage. 2015 Aug 15;117:386-96. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.04.031. Epub 2015 Apr 20.
Visual perspective taking is a fundamental feature of the human social brain. Previous research has mainly focused on explicit visual perspective taking and contrasted brain activation for other- versus self-perspective judgements. This produced a conceptual gap to theory of mind studies, where researchers mainly compared activation for taking another's mental perspective to non-mental control conditions. We compared brain activation for visual perspective taking to activation for non-mental control conditions where the avatar was replaced by directional (arrow, lamp) or non-directional (brick-wall) objects. We found domain-specific activation linked to the avatar's visual perspective in right TPJ, ventral mPFC and ventral precuneus. Interestingly, we found that these areas are spontaneously processing information linked to the other's perspective during self-perspective judgements. Based on a review of the visual perspective taking literature, we discuss how these findings can explain some of the inconsistent/negative results found in previous studies comparing other- versus self-perspective judgements.
视觉观点采择是人类社会大脑的基本特征。先前的研究主要集中在明确的视觉观点采择上，并对比了他人观点和自我观点判断的大脑激活。这与心理理论研究产生了概念上的差距，在心理理论研究中，研究人员主要比较了从他人的心理角度看待事物与非心理控制条件下的激活。我们比较了视觉观点采择的大脑激活与非心理控制条件下的激活，在非心理控制条件下，头像被方向（箭头、灯）或非方向（砖墙）物体取代。我们发现与头像的视觉观点相关的特定于域的激活在右侧 TPJ、腹内侧 mPFC 和腹侧后扣带回中。有趣的是，我们发现这些区域在进行自我观点判断时会自动处理与他人观点相关的信息。基于对视觉观点采择文献的回顾，我们讨论了这些发现如何解释先前比较他人观点和自我观点判断的研究中一些不一致/负面结果的原因。
