ABSTRACT

Interpreting others’ beliefs, desires and intentions is known as “theory of mind” (ToM), and is often evaluated using simplified measurement tools, which may not correctly reflect the brain circuits that are required for real-life ToM functioning. We aimed to identify the brain structures necessary to correctly infer intentions from realistic scenarios by administering The Awareness of Social Inference Test, Enriched subtest to 47 patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, 24 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome, 31 patients with Alzheimer’s syndrome, and 77 older healthy controls. Neuroimaging data was analyzed using voxel based morphometry, and participants’ understanding of intentions was correlated with voxel-wise and region-of interest data. We found that structural integrity of the cinguloinsular cortex in the salience network (SN) was more pivotal for accurate ToM than previously described, emphasizing the importance of the SN for selectively recognizing and attending to social cues during ToM inferences.

摘要

解释他人的信念、愿望和意图被称为“心智理论”（ToM），通常使用简化的测量工具进行评估，这可能无法正确反映现实生活中 ToM 功能所需的大脑回路。我们旨在通过对 47 名行为变异性额颞叶痴呆患者、24 名进行性核上性麻痹综合征患者、31 名阿尔茨海默氏症患者和77 名老年健康对照。使用基于体素的形态计量学分析神经影像数据，参与者对意图的理解与体素和感兴趣区域数据相关。