Reviews and perspectivesThe overlapping relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind
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On the relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind
Cross-fertilisation from the traditionally separate disciplines of social psychology and cognitive neuropsychology in recent years has arguably been one of the most fruitful developments in the study of the human mind and behaviour, and has culminated in an explosion of research on socio-cognitive neuroscience. Social cognition is defined in various ways, but generally refers to the mental operations that underlie social interactions, including perceiving, interpreting, and generating responses
Definitions, distinctions and models
Starting at the most basic level of analysis, we soon arrive at a particularly taxing issue, namely the confusing terminology used to define EP and ToM. The concepts and terminology differ considerably from one author to the next. In some cases, EP and ToM are seen as different facets of a shared core concept (Phillips et al., 2002), such as ‘emotional intelligence’ (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). However, there are other instances where EP and ToM are treated as separate entities (McDonald et al.,
Lesion study data on the relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind
The first set of evidence that we shall consider on the neuroanatomical relationship between EP and ToM comes from studying the effects of localised brain lesions. To orient the reader, focussed literature on the neurology of EP has suggested a number of key themes, namely that EP as a whole may be right-lateralised (Borod, 2002; Yuvaraj et al., 2013), or that it may be lateralised according to valence with the right hemisphere being responsible for the perception of negative emotions and the
Neuroimaging data on the relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind
In the literature on the functional neuroanatomy of healthy young adults (largely neuroimaging studies), there has often been speculation of a partial overlap in the neural systems for EP and ToM. In the discussion that follows, where available, we include the corresponding Brodmann's areas, to facilitate localisation. Fig. 1 may be useful to the reader in understanding the terminology used to parcellate the frontal lobe. It also displays the Brodmann's areas of relevance to studies which have
Concluding remarks
In this review, we have seen that the concepts of EP and ToM are often linked, and at multiple levels. At the conceptual level, two recurrent distinctions were noted. Firstly that EP reflects the processing of emotional information about other people whilst ToM involves processing cognitive information about people; secondly that EP reflects lower-level perceptual processes with ToM reflecting higher-level integration and inference of social information. However, when evaluating more complex
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