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      Dissociable prefrontal networks for cognitive and affective theory of mind: a lesion study.

      1 ,
      Neuropsychologia
      Elsevier BV

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          Abstract

          The underlying mechanisms and neuroanatomical correlates of theory of mind (ToM), the ability to make inferences on others' mental states, remain largely unknown. While numerous studies have implicated the ventromedial (VM) frontal lobes in ToM, recent findings have questioned the role of the prefrontal cortex. We designed two novel tasks that examined the hypothesis that affective ToM processing is distinct from that related to cognitive ToM and depends in part on separate anatomical substrates. The performance of patients with localized lesions in the VM was compared to responses of patients with dorsolateral lesions, mixed prefrontal lesions, and posterior lesions and with healthy control subjects. While controls made fewer errors on affective as compared to cognitive ToM conditions in both tasks, patients with VM damage showed a different trend. Furthermore, while affective ToM was mostly impaired by VM damage, cognitive ToM was mostly impaired by extensive prefrontal damage, suggesting that cognitive and affective mentalizing abilities are partly dissociable. By introducing the concept of 'affective ToM' to the study of social cognition, these results offer new insights into the mediating role of the VM in the affective facets of social behavior that may underlie the behavioral disturbances observed in these patients.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Neuropsychologia
          Neuropsychologia
          Elsevier BV
          0028-3932
          0028-3932
          Oct 01 2007
          : 45
          : 13
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Department of Psychology and Brain & Behavior Center, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel. sshamay@psy.haifa.ac.il
          Article
          S0028-3932(07)00208-4
          10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.05.021
          17640690
          f5c4264d-328a-4912-a947-3d51b2535967
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