New manuscript accepted from the NMR Kids Lab in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
In our article, meta-analytic likelihood estimations and connectivity modelling are used to summarize the neural correlates of mentalizing based on data of over 5000 adults and 479 children and adolescents. Adults (N = 5286) recruited medial prefrontal and middle/inferior frontal cortices, precuneus, temporoparietal junction and middle temporal gyri during mentalizing, which were functionally connected to bilateral inferior/superior parietal lobule and thalamus/striatum. Conjunction & contrast analyses revealed that children & adolescents (N = 479) recruit similar, but fewer core regions. Subgroup analyses revealed an early continuous engagement of middle medial PFC, precuneus and right TPJ in younger children (8–11y) & adolescents (12–18y). Adolescents additionally recruited the left TPJ and middle/inferior temporal cortex. Overall, the observed engagement of the medial PFC, precuneus and right TPJ during mentalizing across all ages reflects an early specialization of some key regions of the social brain.
Full manuscript link: https://academic.oup.com/scan/advance-article/doi/10.1093/scan/nsab105/6373145?login=true
Fehlbaum, L. V., Borbás, R., Paul, K., Eickhoff, S. B., & Raschle, N. M. (2021). Early and Late Neural Correlates of Mentalizing: ALE Meta-Analyses in Adults, Children and Adolescents. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
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