Fletcher P C, Happé F, Frith U, Baker S C, Dolan R J, Frackowiak R S, Frith C D
Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, London, UK.
Cognition. 1995 Nov;57(2):109-28. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(95)00692-r.
The ability of normal children and adults to attribute independent mental states to self and others in order to explain and predict behaviour ("theory of mind") has been a focus of much recent research. Autism is a biologically based disorder which appears to be characterised by a specific impairment in this "mentalising" process. The present paper reports a functional neuroimaging study with positron emission tomography in which we studied brain activity in normal volunteers while they performed story comprehension tasks necessitating the attribution of mental states. The resultant brain activity was compared with that measured in two control tasks: "physical" stories which did not require this mental attribution, and passages of unlinked sentences. Both story conditions, when compared to the unlinked sentences, showed significantly increased regional cerebral blood flow in the following regions: the temporal poles bilaterally, the left superior temporal gyrus and the posterior cingulate cortex. Comparison of the "theory of mind" stories with "physical" stores revealed a specific pattern of activation associated with mental state attribution: it was only this task which produced activation in the medial frontal gyrus on the left (Brodmann's area 8). This comparison also showed significant activation in the posterior cingulate cortex. These surprisingly clear-cut findings are discussed in relation to previous studies of brain activation during story comprehension. The localisation of brain regions involved in normal attribution of mental states and contextual problem solving is feasible and may have implication for the neural basis of autism.
正常儿童和成人将独立心理状态归因于自我和他人以解释和预测行为的能力（“心理理论”）一直是近期众多研究的焦点。自闭症是一种基于生物学的疾病，其特征似乎是在这种“心理化”过程中存在特定损伤。本文报告了一项正电子发射断层扫描功能神经影像学研究，我们在正常志愿者执行需要心理状态归因的故事理解任务时，研究了他们的大脑活动。将由此产生的大脑活动与在两个对照任务中测量的活动进行比较：不需要这种心理归因的“物理”故事，以及不相关句子的段落。与不相关句子相比，两种故事条件下在以下区域均显示局部脑血流量显著增加：双侧颞极、左侧颞上回和后扣带回皮质。将“心理理论”故事与“物理”故事进行比较，揭示了与心理状态归因相关的特定激活模式：只有这项任务在左侧额内侧回（布罗德曼8区）产生激活。这种比较还显示后扣带回皮质有显著激活。结合之前关于故事理解过程中大脑激活的研究，对这些惊人明确的发现进行了讨论。确定参与心理状态正常归因和情境问题解决的脑区是可行的，这可能对自闭症的神经基础有启示意义。
