Manoli Aikaterina, Van Overwalle Frank, Grosse Wiesmann Charlotte, Valk Sofie L
International Max Planck Research School on Cognitive Neuroimaging (IMPRS CoNI), Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Lise Meitner Group Neurobiosocial, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jun 6;16(1):5273. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-60523-9.
There is accumulating evidence that the human cerebellum is heavily implicated in adult social cognition. Yet, its involvement in the development of Theory of Mind (ToM), a hallmark of social cognition, remains elusive. Using openly available functional MRI data of children with emerging ToM abilities (N = 41, age range: 3-12 years) and adults (N = 78), we show that children who pass a false-belief assessment of ToM abilities activate cerebellar Crus I-II in response to ToM events during a movie-watching task, similar to adults. This activation is not statistically significant in children who do not pass the ToM assessment. Functional connectivity profiles between cerebellar and cerebral ToM regions differ as a function of children's ToM abilities. Notably, task-driven connectivity shifts from upstream to downstream connections between cerebellar and cerebral ToM regions from childhood to adulthood. Greater dependence on connections emerging from the cerebellum early in life suggests an important role of the cerebellum in establishing the cognitive processes underlying ToM in childhood and thus for the undisrupted development of social cognition.
越来越多的证据表明，人类小脑与成人社会认知密切相关。然而，它在心理理论（ToM）发展中的作用，作为社会认知的一个标志，仍然难以捉摸。利用公开可得的具有初步ToM能力的儿童（N = 41，年龄范围：3 - 12岁）和成人（N = 78）的功能磁共振成像数据，我们发现，通过ToM能力错误信念评估的儿童在观看电影任务中，面对ToM事件时会激活小脑 Crus I-II，这与成人相似。在未通过ToM评估的儿童中，这种激活在统计学上不显著。小脑与大脑ToM区域之间的功能连接模式因儿童的ToM能力而异。值得注意的是，任务驱动的连接从儿童期到成年期从小脑与大脑ToM区域之间的上游连接转变为下游连接。生命早期对来自小脑的连接的更大依赖表明，小脑在建立儿童期ToM基础的认知过程中起着重要作用，从而对社会认知的正常发展也很重要。
