Neural correlates of three cognitive processes involved in theory of mind and discourse comprehension |
| |
Authors: | Nan Lin Xiaohong Yang Jing Li Shaonan Wang Huimin Hua Yujun Ma Xingshan Li |
| |
Affiliation: | 1.CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science,Institute of Psychology,Beijing,China;2.Department of Psychology,University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing,China;3.National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition,CASIA,Beijing,China;4.University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing,China;5.School of Business Administration,Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics,Zhengzhou,China |
| |
Abstract: | Neuroimaging studies have found that theory of mind (ToM) and discourse comprehension involve similar brain regions. These brain regions may be associated with three cognitive components that are necessarily or frequently involved in ToM and discourse comprehension, including social concept representation and retrieval, domain-general semantic integration, and domain-specific integration of social semantic contents. Using fMRI, we investigated the neural correlates of these three cognitive components by exploring how discourse topic (social/nonsocial) and discourse processing period (ending/beginning) modulate brain activation in a discourse comprehension (and also ToM) task. Different sets of brain areas showed sensitivity to discourse topic, discourse processing period, and the interaction between them, respectively. The most novel finding was that the right temporoparietal junction and middle temporal gyrus showed sensitivity to discourse processing period only during social discourse comprehension, indicating that they selectively contribute to domain-specific semantic integration. Our finding indicates how different domains of semantic information are processed and integrated in the brain and provides new insights into the neural correlates of ToM and discourse comprehension. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|