Spontaneous mentalizing during an interactive real world task: an fMRI study.

Full Abstract

There are moments in everyday life when we need to consider the thoughts and intentions of other individuals in order to act in a socially appropriate manner. Most of this mentalizing occurs spontaneously as we go about our business in the complexity of the real world. As such, studying the neural basis of spontaneous mentalizing has been virtually impossible. Here we devised a means to achieve this by employing a unique combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a detailed and interactive virtual reality simulation of a bustling familiar city, and a retrospective verbal report protocol. We were able to provide insights into the content of spontaneous mentalizing events and identify the brain regions that underlie them. We found increased activity in a number of regions, namely the right posterior superior temporal sulcus, the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporal pole associated with spontaneous mentalizing. Furthermore, we observed the right posterior superior temporal sulcus to be consistently active during several different subtypes of mentalizing events. By contrast, medial prefrontal cortex seemed to be particularly involved in thinking about agents that were visible in the environment. Our findings show that it is possible to investigate the neural basis of mentalizing in a manner closer to its true context, the real world, opening up intriguing possibilities for making comparisons with those who have mentalizing problems.

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Author information

Author/s: Spiers, Hugo J (HJ); Maguire, Eleanor A (EA);

Affiliation: Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. h.spiers(-atsign-)fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

Grants: (Agency:Wellcome Trust)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Neuropsychologia (Neuropsychologia), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-; vol 44 (issue 10) : pp 1674-82

Dates: Created 2006/07/03; Completed 2006/09/19; Revised 2007/08/13;

PMID: 16687157, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Brain Mapping
Cerebral Cortex - anatomy & histology; blood supply
Environment
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods
Intention

Intention
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Oxygen - blood
Thinking - physiology
Video Recording - methods

Associated Chemicals: Oxygen (7782-44-7)

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