Neural correlates of theory-of-mind are associated with variation in children's everyday social cognition.

ABSTRACT: Theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to reason about others' mental states, is central to healthy social development. Neural mechanisms supporting ToM may contribute to individual differences in children's social cognitive behavior. Employing a false belief functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, we identified patterns of neural activity and connectivity elicited by ToM reasoning in school-age children (N = 32, ages 9-13). Next, we tested relations between these neural ToM correlates and children's everyday social cognition. Several key nodes of the neural ToM network showed greater activity when reasoning about false beliefs (ToM condition) vs non-mentalistic false content (control condition), including the bilateral temporoparietal junction (RTPJ and LTPJ), precuneus (PC) and right

SUBMITTER: Mukerji CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6688452 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature