Research Report Beta oscillations precede joint attention and correlate with mentalization in typical development and autism Patricia Soto-Icaza a,* , Lorena Vargas c , Francisco Aboitiz a and Pablo Billeke b,** a Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Departamento de Psiquiatrı´a, Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencias, Facultad de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Cat olica de Chile, Santiago, Chile b Divisi on de Neurociencias, Centro de Investigaci on en Complejidad Social (neuroCICS), Facultad de Gobierno, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile c Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna, Santiago, Chile article info Article history: Received 8 June 2018 Reviewed 10 September 2018 Revised 30 October 2018 Accepted 17 December 2018 Action editor Kerstin Konrad Published online 2 January 2019 Keywords: Childhood EEG Neurodevelopmental disorders Temporoparietal junction Theory of mind abstract A precursor of adult social functioning is joint attention (JA), which is the capacity to share attention on an object with another person. JA precedes the development of the capacity to attribute mental states to others (i.e., mentalization or theory of mind). The neural mechanisms involved in the development of mentalization are not fully understood. Electroencephalographic recordings were made of children while they watched stimuli on a screen and their interaction with the experimenter was assessed. We tested whether neuronal activity preceding JA correlates with mentalization in typically developing (TD) children and whether this activity is impaired in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who evidence deficits in JA and mentalization skills. Both groups exhibited JA behavior with comparable frequency. TD children displayed a higher amplitude of negative central (Nc) event-related potential preceding JA behavior (~500 msec after stimuli presentation), than did the ASD group. Previous to JA behavior, TD children demonstrated beta oscillatory activity in the temporoparietal region, while ASD children did not show an increase in beta activity. In both groups, the beta power correlated with mentalization, suggesting that this specific neuronal mechanism is involved in mentalization, which used during social interaction. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Departamento de Psiquiatrı´a, Facultad de Medicina, Pontificia Uni- versidad Cat olica de Chile, Marcoleta 391, Santiago, 8330024, Chile. ** Corresponding author. Divisi  on de Neurociencias, Centro de Investigaci  on en Complejidad Social (neuroCICS), Facultad de Gobierno, Universidad del Desarrollo, Av. Las Condes 12461, Las Condes, Santiago, 7590943, Chile. E-mail addresses: pasoto@uc.cl (P. Soto-Icaza), pbilleke@udd.cl (P. Billeke). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex cortex 113 (2019) 210 e228 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.12.018 0010-9452/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.