Mindreading mindreading: Using multivariate pattern analysis to decode the neural basis of mental state ascription.

思想恐惧(也被称为心智，或心理理论)是一种思考他人所见、所知、所想、所想、所欲的能力，被认为是社交和交流的基本基础。人们对幼儿和婴儿的恐惧心理进行了广泛的研究，知道自闭症和精神分裂症患者的思维障碍，最近开始在成年人身上研究其认知和神经基础。使用大脑成像技术进行的研究，以及对大脑损伤和脑刺激影响的研究，一致认为，与不涉及理解其他大脑的类似任务相比，某些大脑区域明显参与了忧思，这导致人们认为它们构成了一个“社交”或“忧心的大脑网络”。人们通常认为，这些大脑区域代表令人担忧的信息。然而，最近的另一种说法是，令人担忧的信息被呈现在其他地方，可能是在“语义”的大脑区域，而令人担忧的大脑网络仅仅控制着对这些信息的访问。在这些观点之间进行测试，对于我们理解大脑是如何支持恐惧的是至关重要的，并对长期争论的关于我们如何思考的理论解释有影响。恐惧的基本单位是将特定的动因(例如，Mariam)与特定的内容(例如，……认为盒子里有一只兔子)联系起来的表征。我们将要求参与者使用呈现人物图片的任务和描述他们所思所想的简单情景，在头脑中简短地记住这些信息。因此，参与者将被引导记住一些类似的东西，如“Mariam认为盒子里有只兔子，但我知道真的有铃声”，特定的代理人和特定的内容因试验而异。如果“思维大脑区域”集中参与代表这些信息，那么应该可以从这些区域的大脑活动模式中破译正在思考的代理人(在这里是Mariam)，以及他们正在思考的内容(Rabbit)。然而，如果“关注大脑区域”实际上只将注意力引导到代表“语义”大脑区域的信息，那么就应该有可能从“语义”大脑区域的活动中破译代理和内容信息，而不是“关注”区域。这项工作是在评估思维能力的任务和从人类大脑活动的细粒度模式中解码信息的分析技术方面的最新发展使这项工作成为可能。我们的任务为大量试验提出了令人担忧的问题，在这些试验中，试剂和内容都有系统地变化。三个实验将集中在内容(实验1)、试剂+内容(实验2)和内容信息随时间的协调(实验3)。实验1和实验2将使用fMRI，它提供极好的空间分辨率，而实验3将使用EEG，它提供极好的时间分辨率。所有这三个实验都将采用先进的大脑活动数据多变量分析技术，以检验我们是否真的能破译出关于谁在想什么的信息，这些信息来自大脑的“意念”或“语义”区域。我们的研究将表明，社交大脑的区域是否真的编码了思考所需的信息，并确定了这些信息被激活的顺序。这些结果将对大脑如何支持忧思，以及如何通过脑损伤或自闭症和精神分裂症等疾病中不典型的大脑功能而扰乱忧思产生影响。

Mindreading (also known as mentalising, or Theory of Mind) is the ability to think about what others see, know, think, want and intend, and is thought to be a fundamental basis of social interaction and communication. Mindreading has been widely studied in young children and infants, is known to be impaired in people with autism and schizophrenia, and more recently its cognitive and neural basis has begun to be studied in adults. Research using brain imaging, and examining the effects of brain injury and brain stimulation, converges on the view that some brain regions are distinctively involved in mindreading compared with similar tasks that do not involve understanding other minds, leading to suggestions that they comprise a "social" or "mindreading brain network". It is typically assumed that these brain regions represent mindreading information. However, a recent alternative suggestion is that mindreading information is represented elsewhere, perhaps in "semantic" brain regions, and that the mindreading brain network merely controls access to this information. Testing between these views is critical for our understanding of how the brain supports mindreading, and has implications for long-debated theoretical accounts about how we mindread.The fundamental unit of mindreading is a representation that relates a particular AGENT (e.g., Mariam) to a particular CONTENT (e.g., ...thinks there's a rabbit in the box). We will ask participants to hold such information briefly in mind using tasks that present pictures of people and simple scenarios that depict what they are thinking. Thus, participants will be led to hold in mind something like "Mariam thinks there's a rabbit in the box, but I know there's really a bell", with the particular AGENT and the particular CONTENTS varying from trial to trial. If "mindreading brain regions" are centrally involved in representing such information, then it should be possible to decode the AGENT who is thinking (Mariam in this case), and the CONTENT they are thinking about (Rabbit) from patterns of brain activity in these areas. However, if "mindreading brain regions" actually only direct attention to information represented "semantic" brain regions then, it should be possible to decode AGENT and CONTENT information from activity in "semantic" brain areas, but not "mindreading" areas. The work is made possible by recent developments in tasks for assessing mindreading and analytic techniques for decoding information from fine-grained patterns of human brain activity. Our tasks present mindreading problems for a large number of trials over which AGENT and CONTENT are systematically varied. Three experiments will focus on CONTENT (Experiment 1), AGENT+CONTENT (Experiment 2), and the co-ordination of CONTENT information over time (Experiment 3). Experiments 1 and 2 will employ fMRI, which gives excellent spatial resolution, while Experiment 3 will use EEG, which gives excellent temporal resolution. All three experiments will employ advanced techniques for multivariate analysis of brain activity data to examine whether we can indeed decode information about who is thinking what from "mindreading" or "semantic" brain regions. Our studies will show whether regions of the social brain actually encode information necessary for mindreading, and determine the order in which such information is activated. These results will have implications for how the brain supports mindreading, and how mindreading may be disrupted through brain injury, or atypical brain function in disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.