TY - JOUR
T1 - Are all beliefs equal? Implicit belief attributions recruiting core brain regions of theory of mind
AU - Kovács, Ágnes Melinda
AU - Kühn, Simone
AU - Gergely, György
AU - Csibra, Gergely
AU - Brass, Marcel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Kovács et al.
PY - 2014/9/26
Y1 - 2014/9/26
N2 - Humans possess efficient mechanisms to behave adaptively in social contexts. They ascribe goals and beliefs to others and use these for behavioural predictions. Researchers argued for two separate mental attribution systems: an implicit and automatic one involved in online interactions, and an explicit one mainly used in offline deliberations. However, the underlying mechanisms of these systems and the types of beliefs represented in the implicit system are still unclear. Using neuroimaging methods, we show that the right temporo-parietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, brain regions consistently found to be involved in explicit mental state reasoning, are also recruited by spontaneous belief tracking. While the medial prefrontal cortex was more active when both the participant and another agent believed an object to be at a specific location, the right temporo-parietal junction was selectively activated during tracking the false beliefs of another agent about the presence, but not the absence of objects. While humans can explicitly attribute to a conspecific any possible belief they themselves can entertain, implicit belief tracking seems to be restricted to beliefs with specific contents, a content selectivity that may reflect a crucial functional characteristic and signature property of implicit belief attribution.
AB - Humans possess efficient mechanisms to behave adaptively in social contexts. They ascribe goals and beliefs to others and use these for behavioural predictions. Researchers argued for two separate mental attribution systems: an implicit and automatic one involved in online interactions, and an explicit one mainly used in offline deliberations. However, the underlying mechanisms of these systems and the types of beliefs represented in the implicit system are still unclear. Using neuroimaging methods, we show that the right temporo-parietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, brain regions consistently found to be involved in explicit mental state reasoning, are also recruited by spontaneous belief tracking. While the medial prefrontal cortex was more active when both the participant and another agent believed an object to be at a specific location, the right temporo-parietal junction was selectively activated during tracking the false beliefs of another agent about the presence, but not the absence of objects. While humans can explicitly attribute to a conspecific any possible belief they themselves can entertain, implicit belief tracking seems to be restricted to beliefs with specific contents, a content selectivity that may reflect a crucial functional characteristic and signature property of implicit belief attribution.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84907908426&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0106558
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0106558
M3 - Article
C2 - 25259625
AN - SCOPUS:84907908426
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 9
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 9
M1 - e106558
ER -