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      Can Machines Think? Interaction and Perspective Taking with Robots Investigated via fMRI

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          Abstract

          Background

          When our PC goes on strike again we tend to curse it as if it were a human being. Why and under which circumstances do we attribute human-like properties to machines? Although humans increasingly interact directly with machines it remains unclear whether humans implicitly attribute intentions to them and, if so, whether such interactions resemble human-human interactions on a neural level. In social cognitive neuroscience the ability to attribute intentions and desires to others is being referred to as having a Theory of Mind (ToM). With the present study we investigated whether an increase of human-likeness of interaction partners modulates the participants' ToM associated cortical activity.

          Methodology/Principal Findings

          By means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (subjects n = 20) we investigated cortical activity modulation during highly interactive human-robot game. Increasing degrees of human-likeness for the game partner were introduced by means of a computer partner, a functional robot, an anthropomorphic robot and a human partner. The classical iterated prisoner's dilemma game was applied as experimental task which allowed for an implicit detection of ToM associated cortical activity. During the experiment participants always played against a random sequence unknowingly to them. Irrespective of the surmised interaction partners' responses participants indicated having experienced more fun and competition in the interaction with increasing human-like features of their partners. Parametric modulation of the functional imaging data revealed a highly significant linear increase of cortical activity in the medial frontal cortex as well as in the right temporo-parietal junction in correspondence with the increase of human-likeness of the interaction partner (computer<functional robot<anthropomorphic robot<human).

          Conclusions/Significance

          Both regions correlating with the degree of human-likeness, the medial frontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction, have been associated with Theory-of-Mind. The results demonstrate that the tendency to build a model of another's mind linearly increases with its perceived human-likeness. Moreover, the present data provides first evidence of a contribution of higher human cognitive functions such as ToM in direct interactions with artificial robots. Our results shed light on the long-lasting psychological and philosophical debate regarding human-machine interaction and the question of what makes humans being perceived as human.

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          Most cited references49

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          On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism.

          Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions. Although surprisingly common, anthropomorphism is not invariant. This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants--the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans. These factors help to explain why anthropomorphism is so variable; organize diverse research; and offer testable predictions about dispositional, situational, developmental, and cultural influences on anthropomorphism. Discussion addresses extensions of this theory into the specific psychological processes underlying anthropomorphism, applications of this theory into robotics and human-computer interaction, and the insights offered by this theory into the inverse process of dehumanization. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.
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            People thinking about thinking people. The role of the temporo-parietal junction in "theory of mind".

            Humans powerfully and flexibly interpret the behaviour of other people based on an understanding of their minds: that is, we use a "theory of mind." In this study we distinguish theory of mind, which represents another person's mental states, from a representation of the simple presence of another person per se. The studies reported here establish for the first time that a region in the human temporo-parietal junction (here called the TPJ-M) is involved specifically in reasoning about the contents of another person's mind. First, the TPJ-M was doubly dissociated from the nearby extrastriate body area (EBA; Downing et al., 2001). Second, the TPJ-M does not respond to false representations in non-social control stories. Third, the BOLD response in the TPJ-M bilaterally was higher when subjects read stories about a character's mental states, compared with stories that described people in physical detail, which did not differ from stories about nonhuman objects. Thus, the role of the TPJ-M in understanding other people appears to be specific to reasoning about the content of mental states.
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              A neural basis for social cooperation.

              Cooperation based on reciprocal altruism has evolved in only a small number of species, yet it constitutes the core behavioral principle of human social life. The iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game has been used to model this form of cooperation. We used fMRI to scan 36 women as they played an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game with another woman to investigate the neurobiological basis of cooperative social behavior. Mutual cooperation was associated with consistent activation in brain areas that have been linked with reward processing: nucleus accumbens, the caudate nucleus, ventromedial frontal/orbitofrontal cortex, and rostral anterior cingulate cortex. We propose that activation of this neural network positively reinforces reciprocal altruism, thereby motivating subjects to resist the temptation to selfishly accept but not reciprocate favors.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2008
                9 July 2008
                : 3
                : 7
                : e2597
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychiatry, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
                [2 ]Central Service Facility “Functional Imaging” at the ICCR-BIOMAT, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
                [3 ]Technical Faculty, Cognitive Interaction Technology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
                [4 ]Department of Neurology, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck, Germany
                [5 ]NeuroImage Nord, Department of Systemic Neuroscience, University Medical Center, Hamburg, Germany
                [6 ]Brain Imaging Centre West (BICW), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Wilhelm-Johnen Straße, Jülich, Germany
                Harvard Medical School, United States of America
                Author notes

                Conceived and designed the experiments: SK FH BW GS. Performed the experiments: SK FH. Analyzed the data: FB SK TK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: FB SK FH BW GS TK. Wrote the paper: SK BW.

                Article
                08-PONE-RA-04314R1
                10.1371/journal.pone.0002597
                2440351
                18612463
                0c55e506-9f99-4e75-897c-501400fbcc7e
                Krach et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
                History
                : 14 April 2008
                : 27 May 2008
                Page count
                Pages: 11
                Categories
                Research Article
                Neuroscience/Cognitive Neuroscience
                Physiology/Cognitive Neuroscience
                Neuroscience/Experimental Psychology

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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