Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
8
pubmed:dateCreated
2005-10-3
pubmed:abstractText
The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in seemingly disparate cognitive functions, such as understanding the minds of other people and processing information about the self. This functional overlap would be expected if humans use their own experiences to infer the mental states of others, a basic postulate of simulation theory. Neural activity was measured while participants attended to either the mental or physical aspects of a series of other people. To permit a test of simulation theory's prediction that inferences based on self-reflection should only be made for similar others, targets were subsequently rated for their degree of similarity to self. Parametric analyses revealed a region of the ventral mPFC--previously implicated in self-referencing tasks--in which activity correlated with perceived self/other similarity, but only for mentalizing trials. These results suggest that self-reflection may be used to infer the mental states of others when they are sufficiently similar to self.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Aug
pubmed:issn
0898-929X
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
17
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
1306-15
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2005
pubmed:articleTitle
The link between social cognition and self-referential thought in the medial prefrontal cortex.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. jmitchel@wjh.harvard.edu
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Clinical Trial