distinct regions of right temporo-parietal junction are selective for theory of mind and exogenous attention不同地区颞顶叶交界处是心理理论和外源性注意的选择性.pdfVIP

Distinct Regions of Right Temporo-Parietal Junction Are Selective for Theory of Mind and Exogenous Attention 1 2 2 2 2 Jonathan Scholz , Christina Triantafyllou , Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli , Emery N. Brown , Rebecca Saxe * 1 School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America, 2 Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America Abstract In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, a cortical region in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) is recruited when participants read stories about people’s thoughts (‘Theory of Mind’). Both fMRI and lesion studies suggest that a region near the RTPJ is associated with attentional reorienting in response to an unexpected stimulus. Do Theory of Mind and attentional reorienting recruit a single population of neurons, or are there two neighboring but distinct neural populations in the RTPJ? One recent study compared these activations, and found evidence consistent with a single common region. However, the apparent overlap may have been due to the low resolution of the previous technique. We tested this hypothesis using a high-resolution protocol, within-subjects analyses, and more powerful statistical methods. Strict conjunction analyses revealed that the area of overlap was small and on the periphery of each activation. In addition, a bootstrap analysis identified a reliable 6–10 mm spatial displacement between the peak activations of the two tasks; the same magnitude and direction of displacement was observed in within-subjects comparisons. In all, these results suggest that there are neighboring but distinct regions