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What makes the dorsomedial frontal cortex active during reading the mental states of others?
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The dorsomedial frontal part of the cerebral cortex is consistently activated when people read the mental states of others, such as their beliefs, desires, and intentions, the ability known as having a theory of mind (ToM) or mentalizing. This ubiquitous finding has led many researchers to conclude that the dorsomedial frontal cortex (DMFC) constitutes a core component in mentalizing networks. Despite this, it remains unclear why the DMFC becomes active during ToM tasks. We argue that key psychological and behavioral aspects in mentalizing are closely associated with DMFC functions. These include executive inhibition, distinction between self and others, prediction under uncertainty, and perception of intentions, all of which are important for predicting others' intention and behavior. We review the literature supporting this claim, ranging in fields from developmental psychology to human neuroimaging and macaque electrophysiology. Because perceiving intentions in others' actions initiates mentalizing and forms the basis of virtually all types of social interaction, the fundamental issue in social neuroscience is to determine the aspects of physical entities that make an observer perceive that they are intentional beings and to clarify the neurobiological underpinnings of the perception of intentionality in others' actions.
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“The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex is functionally involved when an individual reflects on unobservable mental states of others, known as social person knowledge ( Dixon et al., 2017 ;Wagner et al., 2012 ), or predicts them under uncertainty (for a review see Isoda and Noritake, 2013 ).”
From Male brain processing of the body odor of ovulating women compared to that of pregnant women (2021) · cites this paper as Isoda and Noritake, 2013
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“This evaluation is made particularly with regard to outcomes that can potentially affect one's well-being and either facilitate or hinder one's goals ( Isoda and Noritake, 2013 ).”
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“The ability to explain and predict others’ behavior in terms of their mental states is known as having a theory of mind (ToM) or mentalizing (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985, 1999; Frith and Frith, 1999).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Isoda, M., & Noritake, A.
- Affiliations
- Kansai Medical University (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Isoda, Masaki
- Venue
- Frontiers in Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2013
- Volume
- 7
- Pages
- 232-232
- ISSN
- 1662-453X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3852025
- OpenAlex
- W1988828685
- Cited by
- 64
- References
- 241
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 0.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (24300125)
- Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Keywords
- dorsomedial frontal cortex, theory of mind, mentalization, intention perception, self-other distinction, prediction under uncertainty, social cognition
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