Mental States Of Others Research Articles

Crimes Against Minds: On Mental Manipulations, Harms and a Human Right to Mental Self-Determination

The neurosciences not only challenge assumptions about the mind’s place in the natural world but also urge us to reconsider its role in the normative world. Based on mind-brain dualism, the law affords only one-sided protection: it systematically protects bodies and brains, but only fragmentarily minds and mental states. The fundamental question, in what ways people may legitimately change mental states of others, is largely unexplored in legal thinking. With novel technologies to both intervene into minds and detect mental activity, the law should, we suggest, introduce stand alone protection for the inner sphere of persons. We shall address some metaphysical questions concerning physical and mental harm and demonstrate gaps in current doctrines, especially in regard to manipulative interferences with decision-making processes. We then outline some reasons for the law to recognize a human right to mental liberty and propose elements of a novel criminal offence proscribing severe interventions into other minds.

Cortical Thinning and Functional Connectivity in Psychopathy

Cortical Thinning and Functional Connectivity in Psychopathy

Egocentric mental transformation of self: effects of spatial relationship in mirror-image and anatomic imitations

Assessing the mental state of others by considering their perspective plays an important part in social communication. Imitation based on visual information represents a typical case of the translation of sensory input into action. Although humans are often successful in imitating complex actions, the mechanisms that underlie successful imitation are poorly understood. In earlier findings, it has been suggested that understanding others' minds through imitation is realized in the course of the comparison between the representations of the self and others, involving a transformation of the egocentric perspective to the allocentric one. There are two possible strategies of transformation between the representation of the self and others. One possible scenario is that the imitator perceives and imitates others as if looking in a mirror (mirror-image imitation, where, for example, the demonstrator's right hand corresponds to the imitator's left hand). Alternatively, the imitator might estimate the demonstrator's action using the anatomically congruent limb (anatomic imitation, where, for example, the demonstrator's right hand corresponds to the imitator's right hand). Here, we conducted a series of experiments in which the subjects imitated simple hand actions such as pushing a button presented from several different spatial orientations rotated at various angles. We observed that the imitators changed their strategy of imitation (mirror-image or anatomic imitation) depending on the nature of spatial configurations. Behavioral data from this study support the hypothesis that mirror-image and anatomic imitations provide complementary systems for understanding the actions and intentions of others.

Reward Prediction Error Signals are Meta-Representational.

Reward Prediction Error Signals are Meta-Representational.

Stress Response Influenced By Variant of Oxytocin Gene

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessStress Response Influenced By Variant of Oxytocin GeneJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:18 May 2012https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.47.10.psychnews_47_10_17-bAbstractFor a century now, evidence has been accruing that the hypothalamic hormone oxytocin plays a raft of intriguing roles in reproduction and social behavior. It is crucial for labor and breastfeeding in women, elicits erections in males, promotes social recognition, increases trust, helps people intuit the mental state of others, and reduces anxiety (Psychiatric News, November 21, 2008).Oxytocin’s antianxiety potential, however, may depend—at least in women—on what version of the hormone they have inherited, a study reported March 15 in Biological Psychiatry suggested.The study, which was headed by Tiffany Love, Ph.D., a research investigator at the University of Michigan’s Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, included 50 healthy young male and female volunteers. They were genotyped to see whether they possessed C variants, G variants, or both of the oxytocin gene and were also evaluated for anxiety with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.The subjects were then exposed to a stress paradigm—moderate levels of sustained deep-muscle pain—and during the stressing, their brains were observed with PET scans for dopamine release. The results from subjects possessing two copies of the C variant of the oxytocin gene or one copy of the C variant and one copy of the G variant were compared with results from subjects possessing two copies of the G variant.Female subjects who had one or two copies of the C variant were found to be more anxious and to excrete more dopamine in response to stress than were female subjects who had two copies of the G variant. Yet there were no differences in anxiety and dopamine release between male subjects who had one or two copies of the C variant and male subjects who had two copies of the G variant.Thus, genetic differences in oxytocin might in part explain why some women are particularly susceptible to anxiety and stress compared with their peers, the scientists believe.The data, Love and colleagues noted in their paper, also suggest that oxytocin influences dopamine selectively in women and as a result may be involved in normal and pathologic states that are more common in women and in which dopamine plays a significant role such as in anxiety or responses to drugs of abuse.“We are currently examining the associations between these same oxytocin gene polymorphisms and stress-induced activity within the mu-opioid system,” Love told Psychiatric News. “This is another system by which oxytocin may exert its effects to modulate social, motivational, and stress behaviors.”The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. An abstract of “Oxytocin Gene Polymorphisms Influence Human Dopaminergic Function in a Sex-Dependent Manner” is posted at www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(12)00112-6/abstract. ISSUES NewArchived

Theory of Mind and Social Cognition in Huntington's Disease, Clinical Correlations - A Preliminary Report (P07.185)

Objective: To evaluate social cognition (SC) and theory of mind (TOM) in Huntington9s disease (HD). Background SC embraces several sub-domains related with the ability to predict what others will think, feel or do in novel situations. TOM is the core component of social functioning and relies on the ability to represent the mental states of others and to predict their possible behaviors. HD is characterized by involuntary movements and psychiatric, behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. HD patients are often socially aloof, show lack of empathy, cognitive rigidity and mood disturbances. Design/Methods: After giving informed consent, 5 patients were diagnosed with HD by clinical findings and genetic testing and composed the sample of this study. The mean age was 47±22.2 years, the average duration of the illness was 7.4±10.5 years, and the mean CAG repeats in the expanded allele was 47, 8±10, 4. The mean level of education was 14, 4±2.6 years. An SC / TOM battery that included Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Reading the Eyes in the Mind Test (REMT), Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), Faux Pas test (FPT) and reversion test was administered. All data were compared with control individuals.Statistical analysis was carried out using one-way ANOVA and correlation coefficients. Results: HD patients performed poorly as compared with control subjects in IGT and FPT, respectively (p Conclusions: The SC and TOM impairment in our HD patients agree with previously reported series and contribute to support a fronto-striatal involvement.Interestingly, in these patients an inverse correlation was observed among SC, TOM and nCAG repeats and disease duration, which may predict a more severe evolution of the disease. Disclosure: Dr. Etcheverry has nothing to disclose. Dr. Demey has nothing to disclose. Dr. Ruotolo has nothing to disclose. Dr. Leis has nothing to disclose. Dr. Orellano has nothing to disclose. Dr. Vanotti has nothing to disclose. Dr. Vilas has nothing to disclose. Dr. Villar has nothing to disclose. Dr. Rojas has nothing to disclose. Dr. Parisi has nothing to disclose. Dr. Persi has nothing to disclose. Dr. Allegri has nothing to disclose. Dr. Gatto has nothing to disclose.

Social-Cognitive Deficits in Normal Aging

A sizeable number of studies have implicated the default network (e.g., medial prefrontal and parietal cortices) in tasks that require participants to infer the mental states of others (i.e., to mentalize). Parallel research has demonstrated that default network function declines over the lifespan, suggesting that older adults may show impairments in social-cognitive tasks that require mentalizing. Older and younger human adults were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing three different social-cognitive tasks. Across three mentalizing paradigms, younger and older adults viewed animated shapes in brief social vignettes, stories about a person's moral actions, and false belief stories. Consistent with predictions, older adults responded less accurately to stories about others' false beliefs and made less use of actors' intentions to judge the moral permissibility of behavior. These impairments in performance during social-cognitive tasks were accompanied by age-related decreases across all three paradigms in the BOLD response of a single brain region, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest specific task-independent age-related deficits in mentalizing that are localizable to changes in circumscribed subregions of the default network.

Social Cognitive Neuroscience: Part 2

Mechanisms of Theory of Mind Theory of Mind or Mentalising is the ability to make inferences about the mental states of others: their intentions, desires and beliefs. Many studies have used brain imaging to explore the neural basis of this ability and the results are remarkably consistent. Activity is seen in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), in the superior temporal sulcus at the junction with the parietal lobe (STS/TPJ), and also in the temporal poles and the posterior cingulate cortex. But ...

Mirror neuron research and Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy: Three points of correspondence

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith asserts that humans have an innate interest in the fortunes of other people and desire for sympathy with others. In Smith’s theory, sympathy is an imperfectly reflected combination of emotion and judgment when one observes someone (the agent) in a particular situation, and imagines being that person in that situation. That imagination produces a degree of interconnectedness among individuals. Recent neuroscience research on mirror neurons provides evidence consistent with Smith’s assertion, suggesting that humans have an innate capability to understand the mental states of others at a neural level. A mirror neuron fires both when an agent acts and when an agent observes that action being performed by another; the name derives from the “mirroring” of the action in the brain of the observer. This neural network and the capabilities arising from it have three points of correspondence with important aspects of the Smithian sympathetic process: an agent’s situation as a stimulus or connection between two similar but separate agents, an external perspective on the actions of others, and an innate imaginative capacity that enables an observer to imagine herself as the agent, in the agent’s situation. Both this sympathetic process and the mirror neuron system predispose individuals toward coordination of the expression of their emotions and of their actions. In Smith’s model this decentralized coordination leads to the emergence of social order, bolstered and reinforced by the emergence and evolution of informal and formal institutions grounded in the sympathetic process. Social order grounded in this sympathetic process relies on a sense of interconnectedness and on shared meanings of actions, and the mirror neuron system predisposes humans toward such interconnection.

Mirror Neuron Research and Adam Smith’s Concept of Sympathy: Three Points of Correspondence

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith asserts that humans have an innate interest in the fortunes of other people and desire for sympathy with others. In Smith’s theory, sympathy is an imperfectly reflected combination of emotion and judgment when one observes someone (the agent) in a particular situation, and imagines being that person in that situation. That imagination produces a degree of interconnectedness among individuals. Recent neuroscience research on mirror neurons provides evidence consistent with Smith’s assertion, suggesting that humans have an innate capability to understand the mental states of others at a neural level. A mirror neuron fires both when an agent acts and when an agent observes that action being performed by another; the name derives from the “mirroring” of the action in the brain of the observer. This neural network and the capabilities arising from it have three points of correspondence with important aspects of the Smithian sympathetic process: an agent’s situation as a stimulus or connection between two similar but separate agents, an external perspective on the actions of others, and an innate imaginative capacity that enables an observer to imagine herself as the agent, in the agent’s situation. Both this sympathetic process and the mirror neuron system predispose individuals toward coordination of the expression of their emotions and of their actions. In Smith’s model this decentralized coordination leads to the emergence of social order, bolstered and reinforced by the emergence and evolution of informal and formal institutions grounded in the sympathetic process. Social order grounded in this sympathetic process relies on a sense of interconnectedness and on shared meanings of actions, and the mirror neuron system predisposes humans toward such interconnection.

In-group/out-group bias in contagious yawning

AbstractBias for an in-group is a social phenomenon characterized by an affinity for one’s in-group over a perceived out-group. Activation in the amygdala, which is implicated in social and emotional processes, is increased when humans view other-race faces. This increase in activation is associated with implicit racial bias as indicated by scores on an implicit attitude test. Contagious yawning is a social process that appears to subserve empathic processes enabling the inferential modeling of the mental states of others and is exhibited in few species other than humans, including chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), stumptail macaques (Macaca arctoides), dogs (Canis familiaris), and budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus). Despite these comparative data, little research has investigated intra-species variation in contagious yawning.

Theory of mind impairment in adult-onset myotonic dystrophy type 1

Patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM 1) exhibit behavioral disorders and distinctive personality traits. We hypothesize that this is due to altered social cognitive function. To investigate the cognitive basis of this impairment in DM 1 patients, we examined their theory of mind (ToM) ability, which is the specific cognitive ability to understand the mental states of others. Nine adult-onset DM 1 patients (4 men and 5 women) performed 2 ToM tasks: “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test and faux pas recognition test. DM 1 patients were found to be impaired in both ToM tests, but had no difficulty with control tasks designed to test visual and lexical comprehension. The present results indicate that social cognitive impairment in patients with adult-onset DM 1 is associated with ToM dysfunction, which could be due to the brain lesions associated with this disease.

Trait Empathy as a Predictor of Individual Differences in Perceived Loneliness

Loneliness has been shown to be inversely correlated with empathy in younger adults. The present study extends previous research by investigating the association between empathy and loneliness across the adult lifespan and examining the role of relevant demographic and personality factors. 110 community-dwelling adults (18 to 81 years old) completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale and the Empathy Quotient. Empathy scores were inversely associated with rated loneliness and predicted 8.7% of variance in loneliness scores after accounting for sex, age, relationship status, education, and neuroticism. The Social Skills factor of the Empathy Quotient was the strongest predictor of the association between perceived empathy and loneliness. Previous research is extended by the finding that rated loneliness was inversely associated with empathy scores across the adult lifespan. Underlying this relationship may be negative perceptions of personal social proclivity as a function of difficulty in understanding the mental states of others and high trait neuroticism.

MDMA enhances “mind reading” of positive emotions and impairs “mind reading” of negative emotions

3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy) increases sociability. The prosocial effects of MDMA may result from the release of the "social hormone" oxytocin and associated alterations in the processing of socioemotional stimuli. We investigated the effects of MDMA (125 mg) on the ability to infer the mental states of others from social cues of the eye region in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. The study included 48 healthy volunteers (24 men, 24 women) and used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects design. A choice reaction time test was used to exclude impairments in psychomotor function. We also measured circulating oxytocin and cortisol levels and subjective drug effects. MDMA differentially affected mind reading depending on the emotional valence of the stimuli. MDMA enhanced the accuracy of mental state decoding for positive stimuli (e.g., friendly), impaired mind reading for negative stimuli (e.g., hostile), and had no effect on mind reading for neutral stimuli (e.g., reflective). MDMA did not affect psychomotor performance, increased circulating oxytocin and cortisol levels, and produced subjective prosocial effects, including feelings of being more open, talkative, and closer to others. The shift in the ability to correctly read socioemotional information toward stimuli associated with positive emotional valence, together with the prosocial feelings elicited by MDMA, may enhance social approach behavior and sociability when MDMA is used recreationally and facilitate therapeutic relationships in MDMA-assisted psychotherapeutic settings.

Accelerated recovery from acute brain injuries: clinical efficacy of neutrotrophic treatment in stroke and traumatic brain injuries

Stroke is one of the most devastating vascular diseases in the world as it is responsible for almost five million deaths per year. Almost 90% of all strokes are ischemic and mainly due to atherosclerosis, cardiac embolism and small-vessel disease. Intracerebral or subarachnoid hemorrhage can lead to hemorrhagic stroke, which usually has the poorest prognosis. Cerebrolysin is a peptide preparation which mimics the action of a neurotrophic factor, protecting stroke-injured neurons and promoting neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Cerebrolysin has been widely studied as a therapeutic tool for both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, as well as traumatic brain injury. In ischemic stroke, Cerebrolysin given as an adjuvant therapy to antiplatelet and rheologically active medication resulted in accelerated improvement in global, neurological and motor functions, cognitive performance and activities of daily living. Cerebrolysin was also safe and well tolerated when administered in patients suffering from hemorrhagic stroke. Traumatic brain injury leads to transient or chronic impairments in physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral functions. This is associated with deficits in the recognition of basic emotions, the capacity to interpret the mental states of others, and executive functioning. Pilot clinical studies with adjuvant Cerebrolysin in the acute and postacute phases of the injury have shown faster recovery, which translates into an earlier onset of rehabilitation and shortened hospitalization time.

Evolution of Social Predictive Brains?

Evolution of Social Predictive Brains?

Translation and adaptation of Theory of Mind tasks into Brazilian portuguese.

Theory of mind (ToM) is a field of social cognition that deals with the individual's cognitive ability to interpret or infer the mental states of others based on previous knowledge. Recently, research has shown that this ability is compromised in patients with some psychopathologies, e.g., schizophrenia and autistic disorder. Investigators have also shown that deficits in ToM have impacts on social functioning and, consequently, on quality of life. Even though ToM studies have recently grown in number, some problems still remain (e.g., the difficulty of standardized tools to assess ToM in different languages). To describe the translation and adaptation into Brazilian Portuguese of two of the most important and widely used ToM tasks, namely, the Theory of Mind Stories and the Hinting Task. The process included the following steps: 1) translation; 2) production of a single translated version and review by specialists; 3) back-translation into English; 4) review by an English-speaking specialist; 5) adaptation of marked corrections; and 6) pilot application in a group representative of the target population (people with schizophrenia). A final translated version was obtained for each of the tasks. Both instruments were well understood by participants and can now be used in the Brazilian experimental setting. The availability of two major ToM tasks in Brazilian Portuguese facilitates the conduction of research on the topic in Brazil. In the future, this could help design clinical interventions aimed at people with social and cognitive difficulties.

The role of Theory of Mind in assessing cooperative intentions

Folk wisdom indicates that people vary in the extent to which they can assess others’ cooperative intentions. In two studies we investigated whether Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to represent mental states of others, is related to accuracy in the recognition of cooperativeness. Participants completed a ToM task and were asked to assess either video clips of people playing a variation of a Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game (Study 1, N = 88), or photographs of people playing PD taken at the very moment when they were expressing a decision to cooperate or to defect (Study 2, N = 99). We found relationships between ToM and cooperative intention recognition only in Study 1, when participants were exposed to long versions of the video clips. In contrast to previous reports, participants in our samples did not score higher than chance in cooperativeness assessment except for Study 1 in the condition with short video clips. Our results question human expertise at identifying defectors and cooperators and do not provide clear support for an association between ToM and cooperativeness assessment. The findings are discussed from the perspective of an evolutionary arms race between interpreting and masking cooperative intentions.

Differences in regional brain volume related to the extraversion–introversion dimension—A voxel based morphometry study

Extraverted individuals are sociable, behaviorally active, and happy. We report data from a voxel based morphometry study investigating, for the first time, if regional volume in gray and white matter brain regions is related to extraversion. For both gray and white matter, all correlations between extraversion and regional brain volume were negative, i.e. the regions were larger in introverts. Gray matter correlations were found in regions that included the right prefrontal cortex and the cortex around the right temporo–parietal junction – regions that are known to be involved in behavioral inhibition, introspection, and social-emotional processing, e.g. evaluation of social stimuli and reasoning about the mental states of others. White matter correlations extended from the brainstem to widespread cortical regions, and were largely due to global effects, i.e. a larger total white matter volume in introverts. We speculate that these white matter findings may reflect differences in ascending modulatory projections affecting cortical regions involved in behavioral regulation.

I see into your mind too well: Working memory adjusts the probability judgment of others' mental states

Although an increasing number of studies on adults have indicated that working memory (WM) contributes to the ability to understand the mental states of others (i.e., theory of mind), the detailed mechanism by which WM contributes to successful reasoning has not previously been revealed. This study shows that WM modulates the degree of attribution of one's own knowledge to others' mental states. Participants were asked to read a story twice (Experiment 2) or as carefully as possible (Experiment 3) and to estimate the probability percentages of possible choices for a naive protagonist's behavior. The participants were then asked to maintain either a two- or seven-letter alphabet string (i.e., a light or heavy WM load, respectively) during the probability estimation but not during the story comprehension. The results showed that compared to the participants with a light WM load, those with a heavy WM load estimated a significantly higher probability of the choice indicating that the protagonist would behave on the basis of a fact that the participants knew but the protagonist did not. This result indicates that WM moderates the extent to which adults attribute their own knowledge to others' mental states. The role of WM in theory of mind and in heuristic strategy for making probability judgments was then discussed.