White matter maturation is associated with the emergence of Theory of Mind in early childhood
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The ability to attribute mental states to other individuals is crucial for human cognition. A milestone of this ability is reached around the age of 4, when children start understanding that others can have false beliefs about the world. The neural basis supporting this critical step is currently unknown. Here, we relate this behavioural change to the maturation of white matter structure in 3- and 4-year-old children. Tract-based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography show that the developmental breakthrough in false belief understanding is associated with age-related changes in local white matter structure in temporoparietal regions, the precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex, and with increased dorsal white matter connectivity between temporoparietal and inferior frontal regions. These effects are independent of co-developing cognitive abilities. Our findings show that the emergence of mental state representation is related to the maturation of core belief processing regions and their connection to the prefrontal cortex.
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The timing of myelination appears to be a good predictor of computational abilities among traits associated with cognitive functions such as language or theory of mind.
“It is noteworthy that among traits associated with cognitive functions such as language or theory of mind, the timing of myelination appears to be a good predictor of computational abilities109,110.”
From A catalog of single nucleotide changes distinguishing modern humans from archaic hominins (2019) · cites this paper as [110]
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- Authors
- Grosse Wiesmann, C., Schreiber, J., Singer, T., Steinbeis, N., & Friederici, A. D.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (DE)
- Leiden University (NL)
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2017-03-21
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 14692-14692
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5364393
- OpenAlex
- W2594903906
- Cited by
- 114
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 4
- FWCI
- 28.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Leiden Repository (Leiden University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Jacobs Foundation
- Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Keywords
- theory of mind, false belief understanding, white matter maturation, early childhood cognitive development, temporoparietal cortex, precuneus, medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, mental state representation, brain development
- MeSH terms
- Child Development, Child, Preschool, Female, Humans, Language Development, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neural Pathways, Parietal Lobe, Temporal Lobe, Prefrontal Cortex, Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Executive Function, Theory of Mind, Functional Neuroimaging, White Matter
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