Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
Elife. 2023 Jul 14;12:e86327. doi: 10.7554/eLife.86327.
Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the cognitive ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. This ability extends even to the attribution of mental states to animations featuring simple geometric shapes, such as the Frith-Happé animations in which two triangles move either purposelessly (Random condition), exhibit purely physical movement (Goal-directed condition), or move as if one triangle is reacting to the other triangle's mental states (ToM condition). While this capacity in humans has been thoroughly established, research on nonhuman primates has yielded inconsistent results. This study explored how marmosets (), a highly social primate species, process Frith-Happé animations by examining gaze patterns and brain activations of marmosets and humans as they observed these animations. We revealed that both marmosets and humans exhibited longer fixations on one of the triangles in ToM animations, compared to other conditions. However, we did not observe the same pattern of longer overall fixation duration on the ToM animations in marmosets as identified in humans. Furthermore, our findings reveal that both species activated extensive and comparable brain networks when viewing ToM versus Random animations, suggesting that marmosets differentiate between these scenarios similarly to humans. While marmosets did not mimic human overall fixation patterns, their gaze behavior and neural activations indicate a distinction between ToM and non-ToM scenarios. This study expands our understanding of nonhuman primate cognitive abilities, shedding light on potential similarities and differences in ToM processing between marmosets and humans.
心理理论（Theory of Mind，ToM）是指个体将心理状态归因于他人的认知能力。这种能力甚至可以延伸到对简单几何形状的动画中所呈现的心理状态的归因，例如 Frith-Happé 动画，其中两个三角形要么无目的地移动（随机条件），要么表现出纯粹的物理运动（目标导向条件），要么表现得好像一个三角形在对另一个三角形的心理状态做出反应（ToM 条件）。虽然人类的这种能力已经得到了充分的证实，但对非人类灵长类动物的研究却得出了不一致的结果。本研究通过观察狨猴和人类观察这些动画时的注视模式和大脑活动，探讨了狨猴如何处理 Frith-Happé 动画。我们发现，与其他条件相比，狨猴和人类在 ToM 动画中对一个三角形的注视时间都更长。然而，我们没有观察到狨猴在 ToM 动画上的总注视时间比人类更长的相同模式。此外，我们的研究结果表明，当观看 ToM 与随机动画时，两种物种都会激活广泛且相似的大脑网络，这表明狨猴与人类类似，可以区分这些场景。虽然狨猴没有模仿人类的总体注视模式，但它们的注视行为和神经活动表明它们可以区分 ToM 和非 ToM 场景。本研究扩展了我们对非人类灵长类动物认知能力的理解，揭示了狨猴和人类在 ToM 处理方面的潜在相似性和差异。
