Mental as Anything

aka "the intentional stance" (Dennett's 1987 book of the same name)

"Mentalizing" is big in Neuron this week:

Chris D. Frith and Uta Frith
The Neural Basis of Mentalizing.
Neuron 50: 531–534; May 18, 2006

Mentalizing refers to our ability to read the mental states of other agents and engages many neural processes. The brain’s mirror system allows us to share the emotions of others. Through perspective taking, we can infer what a person currently believes about the world given their point of view. Finally, the human brain has the unique ability to represent the mental states of the self and the other and the relationship between these mental states, making possible the communication of ideas.

All the new-fangled buzzwords are there:

Theory of Mind
The Brain’s Mirror System
The Neural Correlates of Mentalizing
Perspective Taking

and

Understanding People Like Us

Apropos of the latter (and most disturbing) subheading is an article in the same issue by Mitchell et al.:

Mitchell, J.P., Macrae, C.N., and Banaji, M.R. (2006).
Dissociable Medial Prefrontal Contributions to Judgments of Similar and Dissimilar Others.
Neuron 50: 655–663.

Human social interaction requires the recognition that other people are governed by the same types of mental states -- beliefs, desires, intentions -- that guide one’s own behavior. We used functional neuroimaging to examine how perceivers make mental state inferences when such self-other overlap can be assumed (when the other is similar to oneself) and when it cannot (when the other is dissimilar from oneself). We observed a double dissociation such that mentalizing about a similar other engaged a region of ventral mPFC linked to self-referential thought, whereas mentalizing about a dissimilar other engaged a more dorsal subregion of mPFC. The overlap between judgments of self and similar others suggests the plausibility of "simulation" accounts of social cognition, which posit that perceivers can use knowledge about themselves to infer the mental states of others.

As described by Frith and Frith (2006), this study

"report[ed] an elegant experiment that directly investigates the effect of similarity. Participants were told about two target individuals who were described as having liberal or conservative views. They were then asked to predict the feelings and attitudes of these two targets in various situations (e.g., "would he enjoy having a roommate from a different country"). Subsequently the political attitudes of the participants were also assessed. The results show a different pattern when thinking about a similar or a dissimilar other. Thinking about similar others was associated with activity in ventral mPFC (18, 57, 9 -- in the region labeled anterior rostral MFC in Amodio and Frith 2006), while thinking about a dissimilar other was associated with activity in a more dorsal region of mPFC (29, 45, 42 -- posterior rostral MFC).

This is strong evidence for segregation of function within the area of medial prefrontal cortex associated with mentalizing." [my emphasis]

It couldn't have anything to do with merely agreeing or disagreeing with "the other" now, could it? It really has to do with extracting the putative mental contents from the brain of a hypothetical individual, now does it? Not different affective states engendered by the agreement or disagreement? Not semantic knowledge about how certain "types" of people may act in certain situations? Hmmmm?

Does the first bar graph (below left) mean that liberals are a little less hostile to conservatives than vice versa? Does the other bar graph (below right) mean that the “Not Like Me” area in liberals is equally activated by “self” and “conservative other”?? What DOES it all mean?