TY - JOUR
T1 - Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years
AU - Richardson, Hilary
AU - Lisandrelli, Grace
AU - Riobueno-Naylor, Alexa
AU - Saxe, Rebecca
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Jorie Koster-Hale, Natalia Velez-Alicea, Mika Asaba, and Nir Jacoby for help with data collection, and Stefano Anzellotti, Dorit Kliemann, Julia Leonard, and Lindsey Powell for helpful feedback and discussion. We thank Hyowon Gweon for development of the theory of mind behavioral battery, and Todd Thompson for helping to make the data available. We thank members of the Fedorenko lab for providing the data for the replication experiment. In particular, Alex Paunov and Zach Mineroff led the data collection effort, with help from Caitlyn Hoeflin, Amaya Arcelus, Brianna Pritchett, Idan Blank, and Cara Borelli. We also gratefully acknowledge support of this project by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (#1122374 to H.R.), and an NSF CAREER award (#095518 to R.S.), NIH R01-MH096914-05, a Middleton Chair grant (R.S.), and support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (#2008-333024 to R.S.).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Human adults recruit distinct networks of brain regions to think about the bodies and minds of others. This study characterizes the development of these networks, and tests for relationships between neural development and behavioral changes in reasoning about others' minds ('theory of mind', ToM). A large sample of children (n = 122, 3-12 years), and adults (n = 33), watched a short movie while undergoing fMRI. The movie highlights the characters' bodily sensations (often pain) and mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions), and is a feasible experiment for young children. Here we report three main findings: (1) ToM and pain networks are functionally distinct by age 3 years, (2) functional specialization increases throughout childhood, and (3) functional maturity of each network is related to increasingly anti-correlated responses between the networks. Furthermore, the most studied milestone in ToM development, passing explicit false-belief tasks, does not correspond to discontinuities in the development of the social brain.
AB - Human adults recruit distinct networks of brain regions to think about the bodies and minds of others. This study characterizes the development of these networks, and tests for relationships between neural development and behavioral changes in reasoning about others' minds ('theory of mind', ToM). A large sample of children (n = 122, 3-12 years), and adults (n = 33), watched a short movie while undergoing fMRI. The movie highlights the characters' bodily sensations (often pain) and mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions), and is a feasible experiment for young children. Here we report three main findings: (1) ToM and pain networks are functionally distinct by age 3 years, (2) functional specialization increases throughout childhood, and (3) functional maturity of each network is related to increasingly anti-correlated responses between the networks. Furthermore, the most studied milestone in ToM development, passing explicit false-belief tasks, does not correspond to discontinuities in the development of the social brain.
KW - agency
KW - cognitive neuroscience
KW - empathy
KW - psychology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043385063&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-03399-2
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-03399-2
M3 - Article
C2 - 29531321
AN - SCOPUS:85043385063
VL - 9
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 1027
ER -