Download PDF
Nervenheilkunde 2018; 37(07/08): 500-506
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1668316
Mentalismus
Georg Thieme Verlag

Die mentale Welt der Anderen

Theory of Mind (Mentalisierung) und ihre neuronalen GrundlagenThe world from the others’ perspectiveTheory of mind (mentalizing) and its neural basis
W. Tantchik
1   Division of Mind and Brain Research, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy CCM, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin
,
S. Mohnke
1   Division of Mind and Brain Research, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy CCM, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin
,
H. Walter
1   Division of Mind and Brain Research, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy CCM, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin
› Author Affiliations
Further Information

Publication History

eingegangen am: 20 April 2018

angenommen am: 07 May 2018

Publication Date:
31 July 2018 (online)

    Permissions and Reprints

Zusammenfassung

Das menschliche Gehirn verfügt über eine Reihe von Mechanismen, die uns in die Lage versetzen, die verborgenen mentalen Prozesse unserer Mitmenschen zu erkennen und zu verstehen. Diese Fähigkeiten werden unter dem Begriff Theory of Mind oder Mentalisieren zusammengefasst und haben sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten als bedeutendes Forschungsgebiet verschiedener Disziplinen – von der Entwicklungspsychologie über die kognitiven Neurowissenschaften bis zur Psychiatrie – etabliert. Dieser Artikel gibt einen kurzen Überblick über die Geschichte sowie Gegenwart der Forschung zu Theory of Mind. Im Fokus stehen die neuronalen Grundlagen dieser Fähigkeiten, neben der Beziehung von Theory of Mind zu dem verwandten Konzept der Empathie und der angenommenen Bedeutung des Spiegelneuronensystems werden auch Veränderungen im Verlauf der Entwicklung sowie Störungen im Rahmen psychiatrischer Erkrankungen thematisiert.

Summary

There are a number of mechanisms in the human brain which enable us to recognize and understand the hidden mental processes of other people. These capabilities are subsumed under the term theory of mind or mentalizing and have over the past couple of decades been investigated by researchers in diverse fields – from developmental psychology to cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry. This article provides a short overview of past and present research on theory of mind. While it focuses on the neural underpinnings, it also deals with the relation of theory of mind to the concept of empathy and the supposed contribution of the mirrorneuron system as well as changes during development and impairment in the context of psychiatric disease.

Schlüsselwörter

Theory of Mind - Mentalisieren - Empathie - Spiegelneuronen

Keywords

Theory of mind - mentalizing - empathy - mirror neurons
 

  • Literatur

  • 1 Premack D, Woodruff G. Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1978; 01 (04) 515.
    CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • 2 Martin A, Santos LR. What Cognitive Representations Support Primate Theory of Mind?. Trends Cogn Sci. Regul Ed 2016. 20 (05): 375-82.
    Google Scholar
  • 3 Wimmer H, Perner J. Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition 1983; 13 (01) 103-28.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 4 Baron-Cohen S, Leslie AM, Frith U. Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”?. Cognition 1985; 21 (01) 37-46.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 5 Bloom P, German TP. Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind. Cognition 2000; 77 (01) B25-B31.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 6 Onishi KH, Baillargeon R. Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs?. Science 2005; 308 (5719): 255-8.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 7 O’Neill DK. Two-Year-Old Children’s Sensitivity to a Parent’s Knowledge State When Making Requests. Child Development 1996; 67 (02) 659-77.
    CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • 8 Walter H. Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits, and Genes. Emotion Review 2012; 04 (01) 9-17.
    CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • 9 Saxe R, Houlihan SD. Formalizing emotion concepts within a Bayesian model of theory of mind. Curr Opin Psychol 2017; 17: 15-21.
    PubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 10 Kliemann D, Adolphs R. The social neuroscience of mentalizing: Challenges and recommendations. Curr Opin Psychol 2018; 24: 1-6.
    PubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 11 Gallese V. Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 1998; 02 (12) 493-501.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 12 Mahy CEV, Moses LJ, Pfeifer JH. How and where: Theory-of-mind in the brain. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2014; 09: 68-81.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 13 van Overwalle F. Social cognition and the brain: A meta-analysis. Hum Brain Mapp 2009; 30 (03) 829-58.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 14 Rizzolatti G, Fadiga L, Gallese V, Fogassi L. Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Cognitive Brain Research 1996; 03 (02) 131-41.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 15 Lamm C, Decety J, Singer T. Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. Neuroimage 2011; 54 (03) 2492-502.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 16 Lamm C, Rütgen M, Wagner IC. Imaging empathy and prosocial emotions. Neurosci Lett. 2017
    PubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 17 Niedenthal PM, Brauer M, Halberstadt JB, Innes-Ker ÅH. When did her smile drop?: Facial mimicry and the influences of emotional state on the detection of change in emotional expression. Cognition & Emotion 2001; 15 (06) 853-64.
    CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • 18 Kanske P. The social mind: Disentangling affective and cognitive routes to understanding others. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 2018; 43 (02) 115-24.
    CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • 19 Kanske P, Böckler A, Trautwein F-M, Parianen FHLesemann, Singer T. Are strong empathizers better mentalizers? Evidence for independence and interaction between the routes of social cognition. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2016; 11 (09) 1383-92.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 20 Alcalá-López D, Vogeley K, Binkofski F, Bzdok D. Building Blocks of Social Cognition: Mirror, Mentalize & Share?. Cortex. 2018 in press.
    PubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 21 Carrington SJ, Bailey AJ. Are there theory of mind regions in the brain? A review of the neuroimaging literature. Hum Brain Mapp 2009; 30 (08) 2313-35.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 22 Schurz M, Radua J, Aichhorn M, Richlan F, Perner J. Fractionating theory of mind: A meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2014; 42: 9-34.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 23 Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Ford JM. Default mode network activity and connectivity in psychopathology. Annu Rev Clin Psychol 2012; 08: 49-76.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 24 Spreng RN, Mar RA, Kim ASN. The common neural basis of autobiographical memory, prospection, navigation, theory of mind, and the default mode: A quantitative meta-analysis. J Cogn Neurosci 2009; 21 (03) 489-510.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 25 van der Meer L, Groenewold NA, Nolen WA, Pijnenborg M, Aleman A. Inhibit yourself and understand the other: Neural basis of distinct processes underlying Theory of Mind. Neuroimage 2011; 56 (04) 2364-74.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 26 Hartwright CE, Apperly IA, Hansen PC. The special case of self-perspective inhibition in mental, but not non-mental, representation. Neuropsychologia 2015; 67: 183-92.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 27 Rothmayr C, Sodian B, Hajak G, Döhnel K, Meinhardt J, Sommer M. Common and distinct neural networks for false-belief reasoning and inhibitory control. Neuroimage 2011; 56 (03) 1705-13.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 28 Leslie AM, Friedman O, German TP. Core mechanisms in “theory of mind”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2004; 08 (12) 528-33.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 29 Saxe R, Powell LJ. It’s the thought that counts: Specific brain regions for one component of theory of mind. Psychol Sci 2006; 17 (08) 692-9.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 30 Saxe R, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Scholz J, Pelphrey KA. Brain regions for perceiving and reasoning about other people in school-aged children. Child Dev 2009; 80 (04) 1197-209.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 31 Gweon H, Dodell-Feder D, Bedny M, Saxe R. Theory of mind performance in children correlates with functional specialization of a brain region for thinking about thoughts. Child Dev 2012; 83 (06) 1853-68.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 32 Schnell K, Bluschke S, Konradt B, Walter H. Functional relations of empathy and mentalizing: An fMRI study on the neural basis of cognitive empathy. Neuroimage 2011; 54 (02) 1743-54.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 33 Mitchell JP, Macrae CN, Banaji MR. Dissociable medial prefrontal contributions to judgments of similar and dissimilar others. Neuron 2006; 50 (04) 655-63.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 34 Bzdok D, Langner R, Schilbach L, Engemann DA, Laird AR, Fox PT. et al. Segregation of the human medial prefrontal cortex in social cognition. Front Hum Neurosci 2013; 07: 232.
    Google Scholar
  • 35 Alcalá-López D, Smallwood J, Jefferies E, van Overwalle F, Vogeley K, Mars RB. et al. Computing the Social Brain Connectome Across Systems and States. Cereb Cortex 2017; 1-26.
    PubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 36 Schaafsma SM, Pfaff DW, Spunt RP, Adolphs R. Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2015; 19 (02) 65-72.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 37 Frith U. Mind Blindness and the Brain in Autism. Neuron 2001; 32 (06) 969-79.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 38 Frith CD. Schizophrenia and theory of mind. Psychological Medicine 2004; 34 (03) 385-9.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 39 Bliksted V, Ubukata S, Koelkebeck K. Discriminating autism spectrum disorders from schizophrenia by investigation of mental state attribution on an on-line mentalizing task: A review and metaanalysis. Schizophr Res 2016; 171 (1–3): 16-26.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 40 Russell TA, Reynaud E, Herba C, Morris R, Corcoran R. Do you see what I see? Interpretations of intentional movement in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res 2006; 81 (01) 101-11.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 41 Bentall RP, Rowse G, Shryane N, Kinderman P, Howard R, Blackwood N. et al. The cognitive and affective structure of paranoid delusions: A transdiagnostic investigation of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and depression. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2009; 66 (03) 236-47.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 42 Brüne M. “Theory of mind” in schizophrenia: A review of the literature. Schizophr Bull 2005; 31 (01) 21-42.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 43 Harrington L, Langdon R, Siegert RJ, McClure J. Schizophrenia, theory of mind, and persecutory delusions. Cogn Neuropsychiatry 2005; 10 (02) 87-104.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 44 Langdon R, Ward PB, Coltheart M. Reasoning anomalies associated with delusions in schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull 2010; 36 (02) 321-30.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 45 Abu-Akel A, Bailey AL. The posssibility of different forms of theory of mind impairment in psychiatric and developmental disorders. Psychological Medicine 2000; 30 (03) 735-8.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 46 Crespi B, Badcock C. Psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders of the social brain. Behav Brain Sci 2008; 31 (03) 241-61.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 47 Sugranyes G, Kyriakopoulos M, Corrigall R, Taylor E, Frangou S. Autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia: Meta-analysis of the neural correlates of social cognition. PLoS ONE 2011; 06 (10) e25322.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 48 Kronbichler L, Tschernegg M, Martin AI, Schurz M, Kronbichler M. Abnormal Brain Activation During Theory of Mind Tasks in Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis. Schizophr Bull 2017; 43 (06) 1240-50.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 49 Bölte S, Ciaramidaro A, Schlitt S, Hainz D, Kliemann D, Beyer A. et al. Training-induced plasticity of the social brain in autism spectrum disorder. Br J Psychiatry 2015; 207 (02) 149-57.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 50 Walter H, Ciaramidaro A, Adenzato M, Vasic N, Ardito RB, Erk S. et al. Dysfunction of the social brain in schizophrenia is modulated by intention type: An fMRI study. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2009; 04 (02) 166-76.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 51 Ciaramidaro A, Bölte S, Schlitt S, Hainz D, Poustka F, Weber B. et al. Schizophrenia and autism as contrasting minds: Neural evidence for the hypo-hyper-intentionality hypothesis. Schizophr Bull 2015; 41 (01) 171-9.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 52 Fonagy P, Luyten P. A developmental, mentalizationbased approach to the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder. Dev Psychopathol 2009; 21 (04) 1355-81.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 53 Dziobek I, Preissler S, Grozdanovic Z, Heuser I, Heekeren HR, Roepke S. Neuronal correlates of altered empathy and social cognition in borderline personality disorder. Neuroimage 2011; 57 (02) 539-48.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 54 Cusi AM, Nazarov A, Holshausen K, Macqueen GM, McKinnon MC. Systematic review of the neural basis of social cognition in patients with mood disorders. J Psychiatry Neurosci 2012; 37 (03) 154-69.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 55 Walter H, Mohnke S. Mentalizing and Psychopathology in Schizophrenia, Depression, and Social Anxiety. In: jBrain Mapping. München: Elsevier; 2015: 183-9.
    Google Scholar
  • 56 Zobel I, Werden D, Linster H, Dykierek P, Drieling T, Berger M. et al. Theory of mind deficits in chronically depressed patients. Depress Anxiety 2010; 27 (09) 821-8.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  • 57 Mattern M, Walter H, Hentze C, Schramm E, Drost S, Schoepf D. et al. Behavioral evidence for an impairment of affective theory of mind capabilities in chronic depression. Psychopathology 2015; 48 (04) 240-50.
    CrossrefPubMedGoogle Scholar