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Distinct regions of right temporo-parietal junction are selective for theory of mind and exogenous attention - PubMed

Distinct regions of right temporo-parietal junction are selective for theory of mind and exogenous attention

Jonathan Scholz et al. PLoS One. 2009.

Abstract

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, a cortical region in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) is recruited when participants read stories about people's thoughts ('Theory of Mind'). Both fMRI and lesion studies suggest that a region near the RTPJ is associated with attentional reorienting in response to an unexpected stimulus. Do Theory of Mind and attentional reorienting recruit a single population of neurons, or are there two neighboring but distinct neural populations in the RTPJ? One recent study compared these activations, and found evidence consistent with a single common region. However, the apparent overlap may have been due to the low resolution of the previous technique. We tested this hypothesis using a high-resolution protocol, within-subjects analyses, and more powerful statistical methods. Strict conjunction analyses revealed that the area of overlap was small and on the periphery of each activation. In addition, a bootstrap analysis identified a reliable 6-10 mm spatial displacement between the peak activations of the two tasks; the same magnitude and direction of displacement was observed in within-subjects comparisons. In all, these results suggest that there are neighboring but distinct regions within the RTPJ implicated in Theory of Mind and orienting attention.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Task structure for the two tasks.

(A) Sample stimuli for the Theory of Mind task. The key contrast compares the brain response while participants read ‘Belief’ vs ‘Photo’ stories. (B) Four trial types in the attentional reorienting task. The key contrast compared the brain response while participants detect the target on Invalid, vs Valid, trials.

Figure 2
Figure 2. Group Activations.

(A) Group activations for Belief – Photo (Red) and Invalid – Valid (Green), both

p

<0.001 uncorrected, k>5. (B) Group activations with approximately matching numbers of voxels: Belief – Photo (Red, 82 voxels, p<0.0001, k>10) and Invalid – Valid (Green, 72 voxels, p<0.005, k>10). (C) Interaction of the two contrasts, ((Belief-Photo)-(Invalid-Valid)), p<0.01, k>10. All activations were superimposed on the inflated T1 canonical brain in SPM using the SurfRend toolbox.

Figure 3
Figure 3. Spatial Separation.

(A) Distance between the peaks estimated by the bootstrap: attention region – Theory of Mind region. Bars show 99.9% confidence intervals (3.36 standard errors of the bootstrap mean). There was no reliable difference in the X (medial to lateral) or Y (anterior to posterior) axes, but the attention region was reliably 6–10 mm superior to the theory of mind region. (B) Histogram of the observed distance, on the Z dimension, between the Theory of Mind and attention regions, in the 150 non-parametric bootstrap samples. Positive values indicate that the attention peak was superior to the Theory of Mind peak.

Figure 4
Figure 4. Percent signal change in individually defined regions of interest (n = 11).

Bars represent standard error of the mean.

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