Along with the increased interest in and volume of social cognition research, there has been higher awareness of a lack of agreement on the concepts and taxonomy used to study social processes. Two central concepts in the field, empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM), have been identified as overlapping umbrella terms for different processes of limited convergence. Here, we review and integrate evidence of brain activation, brain organization, and behavior into a coherent model of social-cognitive processes. We start with a meta-analytic clustering of neuroimaging data across different social-cognitive tasks. Results show that understanding others' mental states can be described by a multilevel model of hierarchical structure, similar to models in intelligence and personality research. A higher level describes more broad and abstract classes of functioning, whereas a lower one explains how functions are applied to concrete contexts given by particular stimulus and task formats. Specifically, the higher level of our model suggests 3 groups of neurocognitive processes: (a) predominantly cognitive processes, which are engaged when mentalizing requires self-generated cognition decoupled from the physical world; (b) more affective processes, which are engaged when we witness emotions in others based on shared emotional, motor, and somatosensory representations; (c) combined processes, which engage cognitive and affective functions in parallel. We discuss how these processes are explained by an underlying principal gradient of structural brain organization. Finally, we validate the model by a review of empathy and ToM task interrelations found in behavioral studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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走向社会认知的层次模型：神经影像学荟萃分析和对同理心和心理理论的综合回顾。

随着对社会认知研究的兴趣和数量的增加，人们越来越意识到在用于研究社会过程的概念和分类学上缺乏一致意见。该领域的两个核心概念，同理心和心理理论 (ToM)，已被确定为不同的有限收敛过程的重叠总称。在这里，我们回顾了大脑激活、大脑组织和行为的证据，并将其整合到一个连贯的社会认知过程模型中。我们从跨不同社会认知任务的神经影像数据的元分析聚类开始。结果表明，理解他人的心理状态可以用层次结构的多层次模型来描述，类似于智力和人格研究中的模型。较高层次描述更广泛和抽象的功能类别，而较低层次解释功能如何应用于特定刺激和任务格式给出的具体上下文。具体来说，我们模型的更高层次表明了 3 组神经认知过程：(a) 主要是认知过程，当心智化需要与物理世界分离的自我生成的认知时，这些过程就会参与；(b) 更多的情感过程，当我们根据共同的情感、运动和体感表征观察他人的情感时，就会参与这些过程；(c) 联合过程，同时参与认知和情感功能。我们讨论了这些过程如何通过结构性大脑组织的潜在主要梯度来解释。最后，我们通过回顾行为研究中发现的同理心和 ToM 任务相互关系来验证模型。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。