| Title: |
Brain neuromarkers predict self- and other-related mentalizing across adult, clinical, and developmental samples |
| Authors: |
Açıl, Dorukhan; Andrews-Hanna, Jessica; Lopez-Sola, Marina; van Buuren, Mariët; Krabbendam, Lydia; Zhang, Liwen; van der Meer, Lisette; Fuentes-Claramonte, Paola; Pomarol-Clotet, Edith; Salvador, Raymond; Debbané, Martin; Vrticka, Pascal; Vuilleumier, Patrik; Sbarra, David; Coppola, Andrea; White, Lars; Wager, Tor; Koban, Leonie |
| Contributors: |
University of Arizona; Universitat de Barcelona (UB); Radboud University Medical Center Nijmegen (RadboudUMC); Department of Neuroscience; Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim (NTNU); Norwegian University of Science and Technology = Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet = Norjan teknis-luonnontieteellinen yliopisto (NTNU)-Norwegian University of Science and Technology = Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet = Norjan teknis-luonnontieteellinen yliopisto (NTNU); Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; Fundació per a la Investigació i la Docència Maria Angustias Giménez Barcelone (FIDMAG); FIDMAG Germanes Hospitalaries; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Salud Mental Madrid (CIBER-SAM); Instituto de Salud Carlos III Madrid (ISCIII); Université de Genève = University of Geneva (UNIGE); University College London UCL (UCL); Dartmouth College Hanover; Social, Affective, and Health Neuroscience (CRNL-SOCIALHEALTH); Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon - Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CRNL); Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL); Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne (UJM)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL); Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne (UJM)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) |
| Source: |
https://hal.science/hal-05136713 ; 2025. |
| Publisher Information: |
CCSD |
| Publication Year: |
2025 |
| Collection: |
Université Jean Monnet – Saint-Etienne: HAL |
| Subject Terms: |
[SCCO]Cognitive science; [SDV.NEU]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC] |
| Description: |
Human social interactions rely on the ability to reflect on one’s own and others’ internal states and traits—a psychological process known as mentalizing. Impaired or altered self- and other-related mentalizing is a hallmark of multiple psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Yet, replicable and easily testable brain markers of mentalizing have so far been lacking. Here, we apply an interpretable machine learning approach to multiple datasets (total N =281) to train and validate fMRI brain signatures that predict 1) mentalizing about the self, 2) mentalizing about another person, and 3) both types of mentalizing. We test their generalizability across healthy adults, adolescents, and adults diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The classifier trained across both types of mentalizing showed 98% predictive accuracy in independent validation datasets. Self-mentalizing and other-mentalizing classifiers had positive weights in anterior/medial and posterior/lateral brain areas respectively, with accuracy rates of 82% and 77% for out-of-sample prediction. Classifier patterns across cohorts revealed better self/other separation in 1) healthy adults compared to individuals with schizophrenia and 2) with increasing age in adolescence. Together, our findings reveal consistent and separable neural patterns subserving mentalizing about self and others—present at least from the age of adolescence and functionally altered in severe neuropsychiatric disorders. These mentalizing signatures hold promise as mechanistic neuromarkers to measure social-cognitive processes in different contexts and clinical conditions. Author Note This work was funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC, 101041087) to LKo, a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) doctoral grant and a Network of European Neuroscience Schools (NENS) exchange fellowship to DA, an R01 grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health (R01MH125414-01) to JAH and DAS, a Junior Leader Fellowship from “la Caixa” ... |
| Document Type: |
report |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
BIORXIV: 2025.03.10.642438 |
| DOI: |
10.1101/2025.03.10.642438 |
| Availability: |
https://hal.science/hal-05136713; https://hal.science/hal-05136713v1/document; https://hal.science/hal-05136713v1/file/Preprint_Mentalizing.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.10.642438 |
| Rights: |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.51DF4D06 |
| Database: |
BASE |