Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Departamento de Psiquiatría, Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencias, Facultad de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna, Santiago, Chile.
Cortex. 2019 Apr;113:210-228. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.12.018. Epub 2019 Jan 2.
A precursor of adult social functioning is joint attention (JA), which is the capacity to share attention on an object with another person. JA precedes the development of the capacity to attribute mental states to others (i.e., mentalization or theory of mind). The neural mechanisms involved in the development of mentalization are not fully understood. Electroencephalographic recordings were made of children while they watched stimuli on a screen and their interaction with the experimenter was assessed. We tested whether neuronal activity preceding JA correlates with mentalization in typically developing (TD) children and whether this activity is impaired in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who evidence deficits in JA and mentalization skills. Both groups exhibited JA behavior with comparable frequency. TD children displayed a higher amplitude of negative central (Nc) event-related potential preceding JA behavior (∼500 msec after stimuli presentation), than did the ASD group. Previous to JA behavior, TD children demonstrated beta oscillatory activity in the temporoparietal region, while ASD children did not show an increase in beta activity. In both groups, the beta power correlated with mentalization, suggesting that this specific neuronal mechanism is involved in mentalization, which used during social interaction.
成人社交功能的一个前兆是共同注意（Joint Attention，JA），即与他人共同关注一个物体的能力。JA 先于归因于他人心理状态的能力（即心理化或心理理论）的发展。心理化发展所涉及的神经机制尚不完全清楚。对儿童进行脑电图记录，同时观察他们在屏幕上的刺激以及与实验者的互动情况。我们测试了在典型发育（TD）儿童中，JA 之前的神经元活动是否与心理化相关，以及在具有 JA 和心理化技能缺陷的自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童中，这种活动是否受损。两组儿童表现出 JA 行为的频率相当。TD 儿童在 JA 行为之前表现出更高的中央负（Nc）事件相关电位振幅（刺激呈现后约 500 毫秒），而 ASD 组则没有。在 JA 行为之前，TD 儿童在前颞顶区域表现出β振荡活动，而 ASD 儿童则没有表现出β活动的增加。在两组儿童中，β功率与心理化相关，表明这种特定的神经元机制参与了社会互动中使用的心理化。
