Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on August 7, 2008
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2008 3(3):279-289; doi:10.1093/scan/nsn023
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Differential involvement of the posterior temporal cortex in mentalizing but not perspective taking
1Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Cologne, 2Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, 3Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany, 4C. & O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, 5Institute of Neuroscience and Biophysics, Cognitive Neurology Section, Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany, 6Brain Imaging Center West, Research Center Jülich, Jülich, 7Department of Philosophy, University of Bochum, Bochum and 8Department of Neurology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Understanding and predicting other people's mental states and behavior are important prerequisites for social interactions. The capacity to attribute mental states such as desires, thoughts or intentions to oneself or others is referred to as mentalizing. The right posterior temporal cortex at the temporal–parietal junction has been associated with mentalizing but also with taking someone else's spatial perspective onto the world—possibly an important prerequisite for mentalizing. Here, we directly compared the neural correlates of mentalizing and perspective taking using the same stimulus material. We found significantly increased neural activity in the right posterior segment of the superior temporal sulcus only during mentalizing but not perspective taking. Our data further clarify the role of the posterior temporal cortex in social cognition by showing that it is involved in processing information from socially salient visual cues in situations that require the inference about other people's mental states.
Keywords: posterior superior temporal sulcus; temporo–parietal junction; mentalizing; theory of mind; perspective taking; social cognition
Correspondence should be addressed to Nicole David, Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistr. 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. E-mail: ndavid{at}uke.uni-hamburg.de.
Received January 6, 2008. Accepted July 11, 2008.