Neural Correlates Of Memory,Belief Understanding And Belief Reasoning

Theory of mind is the basis of human interaction. We understand self and others’ mental states such as beliefs, desires, emotions and intentions and predict behavior with this ability. It links external behavior to internal mental state such as belief desire and intention, explains and predicts external behavior. Belief reasoning plays a central role in human social interaction.people’s mental states and behavior depend on the belief of self and others.Everyday reasoning mainly rely on the true belief, but the previous ERP study on theory of mind mostly adopt the false belief task paradigm. Few study focus on the process of belief reasoning, and rarely invest the difference in neural mechanisms of the self and others.The first study used EGI equipment, and showed the program with sound and pictures. We aimed to invest the correlation between memory, belief understanding and belief reasoning. There were three tasks, and each task presented randomly. We told the subjects the following information with sound and pictures:boys and girls put food in different boxes (baseline task); boys and girls guessed the food in different boxes (belief understanding and belief reasoning tasks). Then a question appeared by the way of voice and text. Subjects required to response according to the different types of problems after a box appearing. While brain electrical activity using event-related potentials were recorded. We found that in the 400-700ms of time window, there was difference significantly between the memory and belief understanding task; in the 700-900ms of time window, there was difference significantly between belief understanding and reasoning tasks; in the 700-900ms of time window, there was difference significantly between memory and reasoning tasks. These findings showed the existence of the belief understanding in the process of belief-reasoning for the first time, and indicated the correlation between memory, belief understanding and belief reasoning.The second research set up three task to examine the specific process of beliefs processing of self and others, using 2 (self vs. others)×3 (memory; belief understanding; belief reasoning) experimental design. The experiment consisted of three tasks:location memory, belief understanding and belief reasoning tasks. In location memory tasks subjects only need recall the previous behavior of self and others, not involving belief; in belief understanding tasks subjects were required to understand the belief of self and others, not involving reasoning; in belief reasoning task subjects were asked to predict behavior according to self and others’beliefs. Each task contained self and others two conditions, while brain electrical activity used event-related potentials were recorded.Contrast the memory task to the belief understanding task we found that, from 400ms to 700ms, there was a significant differentiation between the memory and belief understanding task. And the difference between memory and belief understanding task showed a mid-frontal scalp distribution. Contrast the belief understanding task to the belief reasoning task we found that, from 700ms to 900ms, there was a significant differentiation between the belief understanding and belief reasoning task. And the difference between belief understanding and belief reasoning task showed a left-frontal and temporal scalp distribution. Contrast the memory task to the belief reasoning task we found that, from 400ms to 900ms, there was a significant differentiation between the memory and belief reasoning task. And the difference between memory and belief reasoning task showed a left-frontal scalp distribution.These findings also indicated that the correlation among memory, belief understanding and belief reasoning. The tendency of self and other conditions among three tasks showed an cross-task consistency, this finding provided evidence for the memory of self-reference effect and priority processing self-relevant information.