Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Feb 23;18(1):nsac043.
doi: 10.1093/scan/nsac043.

Attention to the other's body sensations modulates the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Barbara Tomasino  1 , Cinzia Canderan  1 , Carolina Bonivento  1 , Raffaella I Rumiati  2
Affiliations

Attention to the other's body sensations modulates the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Barbara Tomasino et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. .

Abstract

Theory of Mind (ToM) is involved in experiencing the mental states and/or emotions of others. A further distinction can be drawn between emotion and perception/sensation. We investigated the mechanisms engaged when participants' attention is driven toward specific states. Accordingly, 21 right-handed healthy individuals performed a modified ToM task in which they reflected about someone's emotion or someone's body sensation, while they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The analysis of brain activity evoked by this task suggests that the two conditions engage a widespread common network previously found involved in affective ToM (temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), parietal cortex, dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), medial- prefrontal cortex (MPFC), Insula). Critically, the key brain result is that body sensation implicates selectively ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). The current findings suggest that only paying attention to the other's body sensations modulates a self-related representation (VMPFC).

Keywords: ToM; VMPFC; emotion; fMRI; perception.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
(A) Behavioral results: Participants’ mean reaction times (ms) on task performance (left panel) and their ratings (right panel). Subjects were significantly slower on the BP task than on the E task. Error bars indicate standard deviations (s.d.). (B) and C) Relative increases in neural activity associated with the BP task (B) and the E task (C) (P < 0.05, corrected at the cluster level; see Table 1) are displayed on a rendered template brain provided by SPM12. (D) Common network activated by the BP and E tasks as revealed by the whole brain analysis. (E) The activation cluster in the left superior medial (and orbital) gyrus at the maximally activated voxel (x = 10, y = 48, z = 2) differentially recruited by the BP (relative to F) contrast.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Amodio D.M., Frith C.D. (2006). Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 268–77. - PubMed
    1. Báez-Mendoza R., Mastrobattista E.P., Wang A.J., Williams Z.M. (2021). Social agent identity cells in the prefrontal cortex of interacting groups of primates. Science (New York, N.Y.), 374, eabb4149. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baron-Cohen S., Leslie A.M., Frith U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21(1), 37–46. - PubMed
    1. Baron-Cohen S. (2001). Theory of mind and autism: a review. In: Glidden, L.M. editor International Review of Research in Mental Retardation: Autism, Vol. 23, Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 169–84.
    1. Barrash J., Tranel D., Anderson S.W. (2000). Acquired personality disturbances associated with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal region. Developmental Neuropsychology, 18, 355–81. - PubMed

Publication types