Abstract
Gender differences in social cognition are a long discussed issue, in particular those concerning Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to explain and predict other people’s mental states. The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to test the hypothesis that anodal tDCS over the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) selectively enhances cognitive ToM performance in females. In the first experiment we administered to sixteen females and sixteen males a cognitive ToM task during anodal or placebo tDCS over the mPFC. In the second experiment further sixteen females completed the task receiving anodal or placebo tDCS over the vertex. The results showed that anodal tDCS over the mPFC enhances ToM in females but not in males, an effect indicated by enhanced ToM in females that received anodal tDCS over the mPFC compared with females that received tDCS over the vertex. These findings are relevant for three reasons. First, we found evidence of gender-related differences in cognitive ToM, extending previous findings concerning affective ToM. Second, these differences emerge with anodal stimulation of the mPFC, confirming the crucial role of this area in cognitive ToM. Third, we show that taking into account gender-related differences is mandatory for the investigation of ToM.
Highlights
Theory of Mind (ToM) is the social cognitive ability to explain and predict other people’s actions in terms of the underlying mental states, such as beliefs, intentions, or feelings[1]
The ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others has been proposed to be based on a distributed neural network, including the complex formed by the right and left temporo-parietal junctions (TPJs), the precuneus, and the medial prefrontal cortex[17]
Regarding the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, the overall group reached a mean of 24.3 ± 3.3 points indicating age- and gender-adequate ToM abilities according to the Italian normative data provided by Vellante et al.[29]
Summary
Theory of Mind (ToM) is the social cognitive ability to explain and predict other people’s actions in terms of the underlying mental states, such as beliefs, intentions, or feelings[1]. Males are, on average, more disposed to a systematizing style, i.e., the drive to predict and to respond to the behavior of non-agentive deterministic systems by inferring the rules that govern such systems This theory has been supported by behavioral studies showing that female subjects, compared to their male counterparts, score higher on tests related to the affective dimension of social cognition, such as emotion recognition[7], social sensitivity[8], empathy[9], and emotional intelligence[10]. 18 for a review), and findings suggest that while the dorsolateral and the ventromedial PFCs exhibit preferences for the processing of cognitive (e.g., intentions, beliefs about beliefs) and affective (e.g., emotions, beliefs about feelings) mental states, respectively, the posterior regions of the ToM neural network (i.e., the precuneus and TPJs) do not exhibit this marked preference but play a major role in assigning agency to these mental states[19,20]. Fumagalli and colleagues[26] investigated utilitarian behavior by means of a moral judgment task and found that tDCS of the ventral PFC influences the evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of utilitarian decisions in both males and females, albeit to a greater degree in females
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