Abstract
The ability to deduce other persons' mental states and emotions which has been termed ‘theory of mind (ToM)’ is highly heritable. First molecular genetic studies focused on some dopamine-related genes, while the genetic basis underlying different components of ToM (affective ToM and cognitive ToM) remain unknown. The current study tested 7 candidate polymorphisms (rs4680, rs4633, rs2020917, rs2239393, rs737865, rs174699 and rs59938883) on the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene. We investigated how these polymorphisms relate to different components of ToM. 101 adults participated in our study; all were genetically unrelated, non-clinical and healthy Chinese subjects. Different ToM tasks were applied to detect their theory of mind ability. The results showed that the COMT gene rs2020917 and rs737865 SNPs were associated with cognitive ToM performance, while the COMT gene rs5993883 SNP was related to affective ToM, in which a significant gender-genotype interaction was found (p = 0.039). Our results highlighted the contribution of DA-related COMT gene on ToM performance. Moreover, we found out that the different SNP at the same gene relates to the discriminative aspect of ToM. Our research provides some preliminary evidence to the genetic basis of theory of mind which still awaits further studies.
Highlights
Attributing mental states and emotions of other people is a central ability in our social interaction which has been termed ‘theory of mind (ToM)’ [1]
It is widely accepted that ToM can be divided into cognitive and affective aspects, cognitive ToM refers to the ability to make inferences about beliefs and motivations, while affective ToM refers to the ability to infer what a person is feeling [7]
On the basis of prior studies, we propose that these functional polymorphisms in COMT gene which promote affect DA levels might be associated with cognitive and affective ToM performance
Summary
Attributing mental states and emotions of other people is a central ability in our social interaction which has been termed ‘theory of mind (ToM)’ [1]. Whether there is some genetic basis behind the ToM developmental schedule comes into our considerations. The studies of individuals with autism whose ToM ability were impaired suggest some genetic basis behind the mentalizing process [6]. The dissociation between cognitive and affective ToM has been highlighted in clinical studies, for example, in Asperger syndrome, the affective component has been shown to be more impaired than the cognitive one [8]. The dorsal striatum, dorsal ACC, dorsal MPFC and the DLPFC are uniquely involved in processing cognitive ToM tasks (e.g., false belief and second-order deception tasks). The available evidence provides us with a constructive model to understand the different dimensions of ToM as well as the neural mechanism of different aspects, and hints that each aspect of ToM may have a unique genetic basis that need to be explored in greater depth
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