Article
Neurosciences
Joao Valente Duarte, Rodolfo Abreu, Miguel Castelo-Branco
Summary: This study investigates the functional separation between local biological motion perception and global dynamic body perception, revealing two independent processing stages and highlighting the importance of two early dorsal and two ventral visual regions in encoding biological motion.
Article
Genetics & Heredity
Subhadip Paul, Aditi Arora, Rashi Midha, Dinh Vu, Prasun K. Roy, Matthew K. Belmonte
Summary: Autism is characterized by impaired social cognitive empathizing and superior rule-based systemizing. This study found that social impairment is associated with functional efficiency in specific brain regions, while systemizing is linked to global structural efficiency. Individual differences in theory-of-mind related to brain structure were also identified, highlighting the complexity of connectivity in autism.
Article
Psychology, Developmental
H. Richardson, R. Saxe, M. Bedny
Summary: Vision is an important source of information for sighted children, especially before language development, providing insight into mental states through observed actions, eye gaze, and facial expressions. However, research shows that blind children have slightly lower performance in theory of mind reasoning and weaker functional development in ToM brain regions compared to sighted children, suggesting that vision facilitates but is not essential for ToM development.
DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Psychiatry
Rachal R. Hegde, Synthia Guimond, Deepthi Bannai, Victor Zeng, Shezal Padani, Shaun M. Eack, Matcheri S. Keshavan
Summary: This study validated the False Belief task as a measure of Theory of Mind in schizophrenia and found that individuals with schizophrenia exhibited reduced brain activation in the bilateral TPJ during the task, which was positively associated with ToM abilities. Lower neural activity in the bilateral TPJ was associated with ToM impairments observed in individuals with early course schizophrenia.
JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Sara Spadone, Viviana Betti, Carlo Sestieri, Vittorio Pizzella, Maurizio Corbetta, Stefania Della Penna
Summary: This study used magnetoencephalography to measure different properties of event-related desynchronization/synchronization activity during a visuospatial attention task. The results showed that reorienting and maintaining attention tasks produced distinct patterns of ERD/ERS modulations in specific anatomical regions and networks.
Article
Engineering, Biomedical
Pawan Lapborisuth, Sharath Koorathota, Qi Wang, Paul Sajda
Summary: This study utilized virtual reality (VR) technology to investigate the relationship between gaze and attention reorienting, finding that gaze dwell time contributed most significantly to reorienting signals. By integrating EEG, pupil, and dwell time features, a hybrid classifier successfully detected reorienting signals in both fixed and free conditions.
JOURNAL OF NEURAL ENGINEERING
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Cory Shain, Alexander Paunov, Xuanyi Chen, Benjamin Lipkin, Evelina Fedorenko
Summary: Language comprehension and theory of mind (ToM) are related during development and language use. However, neural evidence on the relationship between language and ToM is mixed. This study examines the response of the language network to verbal and nonverbal ToM tasks using fMRI. The results show that the differences in brain activation between language and ToM are largely due to linguistic confounds, arguing against cognitive and neural overlap.
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Giorgia Picci, Lauren R. Ott, Nathan M. Petro, Chloe C. Casagrande, Abraham D. Killanin, Danielle L. Rice, Anna T. Coutant, Yasra Arif, Christine M. Embury, Hannah J. Okelberry, Hallie J. Johnson, Seth D. Springer, Haley R. Pulliam, Yu-Ping Wang, Vince D. Calhoun, Julia M. Stephen, Elizabeth Heinrichs-Graham, Brittany K. Taylor, Tony W. Wilson
Summary: This study used magnetoencephalography to examine the neural dynamics during attention reorienting in youth. It found that as age increased, there were stronger theta and alpha-beta spectral oscillatory activities in the fronto-parietal network, with more limited effects for alpha-beta responses. These findings demonstrate the developmental effects in spectrally-specific neural oscillations for attention allocation.
DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
B. Locke Welborn, Macrina C. Dieffenbach, Matthew D. Lieberman
Summary: Understanding the neural mechanisms behind our ability to comprehend the socio-political attitudes of others is crucial, but understudied. This study used multivariate pattern analysis to examine the activation patterns in the default mode network (DMN) while participants assessed their own attitudes and those of others. The results showed that common patterns in DMN regions encode both self and other attitudes across a range of contemporary socio-political issues. These findings suggest a possible neural basis for egocentric biases in perceiving individual and group attitudes, as well as provide evidence for overlap between self and other mentalizing.
SOCIAL COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Irene Sophia Plank, Catherine Hindi Attar, Stefanie Lydia Kunas, Isabel Dziobek, Felix Bermpohl
Summary: Despite limited knowledge on the influence of parenthood on theory of mind, this study revealed differences in neural activation between mothers and non-mothers when inferring mental states of others. These differences were not specific to children and may indicate that mothers and non-mothers employ different strategies in inferring action intentions from affective faces.
SOCIAL COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Dorita H. F. Chang, Nikolaus F. Troje, Yuji Ikegaya, Ichiro Fujita, Hiroshi Ban
Summary: The study aimed to understand the spatiotemporal characteristics of biological motion perception. Univariate response components were observed at around 200ms and 650ms post-stimulus onset, with multivariate patterns specific to form discriminated as early as 100ms. Early responses to biological motion likely originate from occipital cortex, while later responses likely come from extrastriate body areas.
Article
Neurosciences
Ruidi Wang, Xiqian Lu, Yi Jiang
Summary: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers identified brain areas related to facing direction, gender, and emotional state encoded in biological motion. These attributes were found to be encoded in a hierarchical structure, with modulation between each other. Additionally, some brain areas specific to attribute encoding were found to be correlated with behavioral results.
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Philippe Blonde, Jean-Charles Girardeau, Marco Sperduti, Pascale Piolino
Summary: In the field of cognitive neuroscience, mind wandering has gained increasing interest in the past two decades. However, its effect on episodic memory encoding has only recently been studied and there is currently no systematic synthesis on this topic. This systematic review examined the literature on mind wandering and episodic memory, finding that stimulus-independent mind wandering negatively affects the encoding of both words and audio-visual stimuli. However, some studies suggest a potential positive effect of stimulus-dependent mind wandering on episodic memory encoding. Theoretical explanations, limitations of existing research, and possible future research directions are discussed.
NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOBEHAVIORAL REVIEWS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Alfredo Spagna, Dimitri J. Bayle, Zaira Romeo, Tal Seidel-Malkinson, Jianghao Liu, Lydia Yahia-Cherif, Ana B. Chica, Paolo Bartolomeo
Summary: How attentional networks influence conscious perception has been studied using magnetoencephalography in humans. The results showed that both nonpredictive and predictive valid cues increased conscious detection, but only predictive cues affected the response criterion and target contrast. Frontoparietal networks were found to be involved in conscious perception following valid predictive cues. Invalid orienting of spatial attention disrupted conscious processing.
Article
Neurosciences
Na Yeon Kim, Mark A. Pinsk, Sabine Kastner
Summary: Research suggests that basic competitive interactions in the visual cortex of children above age 8 operate in an adult-like manner, with subtle differences in early visual areas and area MT. This study establishes a paradigm and provides baseline data to investigate the neural basis of visuo-spatial processing in typical and atypical development.