Seeing things differently: Gaze shapes neural signal during mentalizing according to emotional awareness
Kristin Marie Zimmermann,
Kirsten Daniela Schmidt,
Franziska Gronow,
Jens Sommer,
Frank Leweke,
Andreas Jansen
Affiliations
Kristin Marie Zimmermann
Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, Hospital zum Heiligen Geist, Academic Teaching Hospital of the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), University of Marburg and Justus Liebig University Giessen; Corresponding author at: Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Rudolf-Bultmann-Str. 8, 35039 Marburg, Germany.
Kirsten Daniela Schmidt
Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Franziska Gronow
Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), University of Marburg and Justus Liebig University Giessen
Jens Sommer
Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), University of Marburg and Justus Liebig University Giessen; Core-Unit Brainimaging, Faculty of Medicine, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Frank Leweke
Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany
Andreas Jansen
Laboratory for Multimodal Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), University of Marburg and Justus Liebig University Giessen; Core-Unit Brainimaging, Faculty of Medicine, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Studies on social cognition often use complex visual stimuli to asses neural processes attributed to abilities like “mentalizing” or “Theory of Mind” (ToM). During the processing of these stimuli, eye gaze, however, shapes neural signal patterns. Individual differences in neural operations on social cognition may therefore be obscured if individuals’ gaze behavior differs systematically. These obstacles can be overcome by the combined analysis of neural signal and natural viewing behavior. Here, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with eye-tracking to examine effects of unconstrained gaze on neural ToM processes in healthy individuals with differing levels of emotional awareness, i.e. alexithymia. First, as previously described for emotional tasks, people with higher alexithymia levels look less at eyes in both ToM and task-free viewing contexts. Further, we find that neural ToM processes are not affected by individual differences in alexithymia per se. Instead, depending on alexithymia levels, gaze on critical stimulus aspects reversely shapes the signal in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and anterior temporoparietal junction (TPJ) as distinct nodes of the ToM system. These results emphasize that natural selective attention affects fMRI patterns well beyond the visual system. Our study implies that, whenever using a task with multiple degrees of freedom in scan paths, ignoring the latter might obscure important conclusions.
