TY - JOUR
T1 - The representational structure of mental states generalizes across target people and stimulus modalities
AU - Weaverdyck, Miriam E.
AU - Thornton, Mark A.
AU - Tamir, Diana I.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - Each individual experiences mental states in their own idiosyncratic way, yet perceivers can accurately understand a huge variety of states across unique individuals. How do they accomplish this feat? Do people think about their own anger in the same ways as another person's anger? Is reading about someone's anxiety the same as seeing it? Here, we test the hypothesis that a common conceptual core unites mental state representations across contexts. Across three studies, participants judged the mental states of multiple targets, including a generic other, the self, a socially close other, and a socially distant other. Participants viewed mental state stimuli in multiple modalities, including written scenarios and images. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that brain regions associated with social cognition expressed stable neural representations of mental states across both targets and modalities. Together, these results suggest that people use stable models of mental states across different people and contexts.
AB - Each individual experiences mental states in their own idiosyncratic way, yet perceivers can accurately understand a huge variety of states across unique individuals. How do they accomplish this feat? Do people think about their own anger in the same ways as another person's anger? Is reading about someone's anxiety the same as seeing it? Here, we test the hypothesis that a common conceptual core unites mental state representations across contexts. Across three studies, participants judged the mental states of multiple targets, including a generic other, the self, a socially close other, and a socially distant other. Participants viewed mental state stimuli in multiple modalities, including written scenarios and images. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that brain regions associated with social cognition expressed stable neural representations of mental states across both targets and modalities. Together, these results suggest that people use stable models of mental states across different people and contexts.
KW - Mentalizing
KW - Representational similarity analysis
KW - Social cognition
KW - fMRI
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108000563&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118258
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118258
M3 - Article
C2 - 34118394
AN - SCOPUS:85108000563
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 238
JO - Neuroimage
JF - Neuroimage
M1 - 118258
ER -