The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in "Social" Cognition

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in "Social" Cognition Jason Mitchell1* 1 Harvard University, United States Human social interaction requires the recognition that other people are governed by the same type of mental states beliefs, desires, intentions that guide ones own behavior. One useful strategy for inferring others mental states (i.e., mentalizing) may be to use knowledge of ones own thoughts, feelings, and desires as a proxy for those of other people. These self-referential accounts of social cognition are supported by recent research suggesting that a single brain region ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) is engaged both by tasks that require self-reference and those that require inferences about the minds of others. However, perceivers appear to deploy such self-based mentalizing processes only in particular contexts. I will review recent neuroimaging work that has demonstrated that perceivers selectively use themselves as a proxy for others only when they have reasons to believe that a target thinks in similar ways as they do: that is, when they assume that another person is sufficiently like-minded. At the same time, perceivers can be induced to mentalize self-referentially after conscious attempts to take the perspective another person, lending neuroimaging support to suggestions that perspective-taking increases self-other overlap. Finally, our recent work has used fMRI to examine whether some of the irrational choices made by perceivers about their future selves (temporal discounting) may result from the failure to perceive ones later self as sufficiently self-like. Conference: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes, Toronto, Canada, 22 Mar - 26 Mar, 2010. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Abstracts Citation: Mitchell J (2010). The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in "Social" Cognition. Conference Abstract: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.14.00018 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Jun 2010; Published Online: 25 Jun 2010. * Correspondence: Jason Mitchell, Harvard University, Paris, United States, jason_mitchell@harvard.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Jason Mitchell Google Jason Mitchell Google Scholar Jason Mitchell PubMed Jason Mitchell Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.