Seeing things differently: Gaze shapes neural signal during mentalizing according to emotional awareness

NeuroImage

Franziska Gronow¹  Jens Sommer²  Kirsten Daniela Schmidt³  Kristin Marie Zimmermann⁴  Andreas Jansen⁴  Frank Leweke⁴ 

[1] Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), University of Marburg and Justus Liebig University Giessen;Corresponding author at: Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Rudolf-Bultmann-Str. 8, 35039 Marburg, Germany.;Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, Hospital zum Heiligen Geist, Academic Teaching Hospital of the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany;Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany;

关键词: Eye-tracking;    fMRI;    Emotional awareness;    Alexithymia;    Theory of Mind;    Mentalizing;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Studies on social cognition often use complex visual stimuli to asses neural processes attributed to abilities like “mentalizing” or “Theory of Mind” (ToM). During the processing of these stimuli, eye gaze, however, shapes neural signal patterns. Individual differences in neural operations on social cognition may therefore be obscured if individuals’ gaze behavior differs systematically. These obstacles can be overcome by the combined analysis of neural signal and natural viewing behavior. Here, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with eye-tracking to examine effects of unconstrained gaze on neural ToM processes in healthy individuals with differing levels of emotional awareness, i.e. alexithymia. First, as previously described for emotional tasks, people with higher alexithymia levels look less at eyes in both ToM and task-free viewing contexts. Further, we find that neural ToM processes are not affected by individual differences in alexithymia per se. Instead, depending on alexithymia levels, gaze on critical stimulus aspects reversely shapes the signal in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and anterior temporoparietal junction (TPJ) as distinct nodes of the ToM system. These results emphasize that natural selective attention affects fMRI patterns well beyond the visual system. Our study implies that, whenever using a task with multiple degrees of freedom in scan paths, ignoring the latter might obscure important conclusions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown