MANIPULATION OF MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS USING A SELF-REFERENTIAL FRAME IS FACILITATED IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

Social neuroscientists and neuroeconomists have recently started to clarify the neural mechanisms underlying the capacity to represent others' intentions, beliefs, and desires and to share others' feelings (referred to as empathy). Even though the abilities to mentalize and to empathize are mostly used in concert when one tries to understand other people's intentions, beliefs, desires, and feelings, preliminary evidence from studies of populations of patients with marked social deficits, like those with autism or psychopathy, suggest that mentalizing and empathizing are actually two distinct abilities that rely on distinct neural circuitries. For example, patients with autistic spectrum disorders often have deficits in cognitive perspective-taking, while psychopaths are very good at understanding other people's intentions and consequently at manipulating other people's behavior. In contrast, psychopaths lack empathy, which may be the reason for their antisocial behavior. Such a dissociation points to an important difference between the abilities to mentalize and to empathize. Whereas both abilities play an important role in drawing inferences about other people's cognitive and emotional states, it has been suggested that empathy has not only an epistemological but also motivational and social roles.