Amygdala volume linked to individual differences in mental state inference in early childhood and adulthood
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We investigated the role of the amygdala in mental state inference in a sample of adults and in a sample of children aged 4 and 6 years. This period in early childhood represents a time when mentalizing abilities undergo dramatic changes. Both children and adults inferred mental states from pictures of others' eyes, and children also inferred the mental states of others from stories (e.g., a false belief task). We also collected structural MRI data from these participants, to determine whether larger amygdala volumes (controlling for age and total gray matter volume) were related to better face-based and story-based mentalizing. For children, larger amygdala volumes were related to better face-based, but not story-based, mentalizing. In contrast, in adults, amygdala volume was not related to face-based mentalizing. We next divided the face-based items into two subscales: cognitive (e.g., thinking, not believing) versus affective (e.g., friendly, kind) items. For children, performance on cognitive items was positively correlated with amygdala volume, but for adults, only performance on affective items was positively correlated with amygdala volume. These results indicate that the amygdala's role in mentalizing may be specific to face-based tasks and that the nature of its involvement may change over development.
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Greater amygdala volume is linked to more social sensitivity in general rather than specifically to threats.
“For example, large amygdala volume is positively associated not only with separation anxiety (Redlich et al., 2015) but also with mental state inference (Rice et al., 2014) and social network size and complexity (Bickart et al., 2011, Kanai et al., 2012), including in adolescents (Von der Heide et al., 2014).”
From Adolescent neurobiological susceptibility to social context (2016) · cites this paper as Rice et al., 2014
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Adolescent neurobiological susceptibility to social context
Schriber, R. A., & Guyer, A. E. (2016) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2015.12.009 · Cited by 246 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Rice, K., Viscomi, B., Riggins, T., & Redcay, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- Corresponding author
- Redcay, Elizabeth
- Venue
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-04
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- 153-163
- ISSN
- 1878-9293 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6987896
- OpenAlex
- W1973091451
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 69
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 5.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- NSF GRF
- UMD Dean's Research Initiative
- Maryland Neuroimaging Center Seed
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Keywords
- amygdala volume, mental state inference, mentalization, theory of mind, early childhood development, false belief tasks, individual differences, brain-behavior relationship
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Affect, Amygdala, Child, Child, Preschool, Cognition, Culture, Eye, Facial Expression, Female, Humans, Individuality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Organ Size, Social Behavior, Young Adult, Theory of Mind
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