[What is theory of mind?]

Abstract

Introduction: The brain is, basically speaking, a predictive machine, designed to reduce environmental incertitude. The theory of mind originated from a concept found in the pioneer works of Premack and Woodruf and refers to the ability to understand and predict the behaviour of other people, their knowledge, intentions, emotions and beliefs. This term was initially confined to the study of primatology and aetiology of autism, proposing that the cause of generalised disorders in development was an absence of theory of mind. In recent years however we have observed a great proliferation of studies on this complex concept and its affectation in various pathologies.

Development: This work proposes dividing the concept of theory of mind into different processes and how to evaluate each one. It furthermore aims at establishing the brain structures related with each level of theory of mind. These levels of complexity are: facial recognition of emotions, first and second order beliefs, social usage of language, social behaviour and empathy.

Conclusions: To conclude, we reflect on certain relevant theoretic concepts on the matter such as the role of prefrontal cortex in the theory of mind, the categorical versus dimensional when we refer to this type of concept; modularity or neural systems, emotional and social intelligence versus cognitive intelligence or the role of bi-directionality in these complex cognitive processes.