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fMRI evidence for dissociation and interactions between language and Theory of Mind in adult cognition | title | fMRI evidence for dissociation and interactions between language and Theory of Mind in adult cognition |
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| start_date | 2023/04/06 |
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| schedule | 11h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | Amphithéâtre |
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| summary | Language is widely taken to underpin the open-ended character of human thought, placing it at the core of uniquely human cognition. Seeing language as, in the first instance, a system for communication, for cooperative information transfer between individuals, rather than as a system for thought, shifts attention from the internal structure of the language faculty to the many aspects of its relationship to the broader set of human social cognitive abilities with which it evolved, which both facilitate and are transformed by its development, and with which it continues to work jointly in adult cognition. Key among these is a system for reasoning about mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions, known as Theory of Mind, or ToM. Characterizing the neural substrates of language and ToM in relation to each other – their dissociability and interactions in everyday cognition – is a crucial step towards understanding their cognitive relationship, in adulthood, as well as in development and evolution. The studies I will present are groundwork in this project.
First, I will present fMRI evidence from large samples of adult participants showing that although the classic language network is robustly recruited in a verbal ToM task, non-verbal ToM does not elicit a response in the network, arguing against a core functional role of language in mental state understanding by adulthood. Then, I will evaluate the degree to which language and ToM can be dissociated in naturalistic cognition with two complementary approaches. By correlating regional time courses of activation across participants, I will show that language- and ToM-specialized cortical regions dissociate in their tracking of diverse naturalistic materials rich in language and/or mental state content. By correlating time courses across regions within and between networks, I will show that, although dissociable, language and ToM are also reliably synchronized both at rest and during story comprehension. This synchronization may provide a signature of inter-network information sharing. Together, these results support a view of language and ToM as distinct cognitive domains and suggest directions for future work on their division of labor and interactions. |
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| responsibles | Epinat-Duclos |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2023/04/04 14:36 UTC |
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