Sophisticated perspective-takers are distinctive: Neural idiosyncrasy of functional connectivity in the mentalizing network

Yu Zhang; Chao Ma; Haiming Li; Leonardo Assumpção; Yi Liu

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111472

Sophisticated perspective-takers are distinctive: Neural idiosyncrasy of functional connectivity in the mentalizing network

iScience. 2024 Nov 23;27(12):111472. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111472. eCollection 2024 Dec 20.

Authors

Yu Zhang^{1

2}, Chao Ma^{1

2}, Haiming Li^{1

2}, Leonardo Assumpção³, Yi Liu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China.
² Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Brain Development, Changchun 130024, China.
³ General and Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians University, 80802 Munich, Germany.

Abstract

Naive perspective-takers often perceive the social world in a simplistic and uniform way, whereas sophisticated ones recognize the diversity and complexity of others' minds. This commonly accepted distinction points to a possibility of greater inter-individual variability in mentalizing for sophisticated than naive perspective-takers, a difference previously overlooked in research. In the current study, participants were asked to watch a mentalizing-related movie and their neural responses, interpretations of the characters' mental states, and eye-gaze trajectories were recorded. The results provide robust and converging evidence that the neural connectomic features within the mentalizing network, eye-gaze trajectories, and interpretations of others' mental states exhibit greater inter-individual variability among sophisticated perspective-takers compared to naive ones, supporting that sophisticated perspective-takers are more distinctive while naive ones are more similar. These findings deepen our understanding of mentalizing by highlighting the idiosyncrasy and homogeneity of neural collaboration and behavioral manifestations across varying levels of perspective-taking sophistication.

Keywords: Behavioral neuroscience; Cognitive neuroscience; Neuroscience; Social sciences.