Research Report Modulation of the cortical false belief network during development Monika Sommer a, ⁎ , Jörg Meinhardt b , Kerstin Eichenmüller a , Beate Sodian b , Katrin Döhnel a , Göran Hajak a a University Medical Center Regensburg, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Regensburg, Germany b Department of Psychology and Education Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Accepted 17 July 2010 Available online 3 August 2010 The ability to represent false beliefs is commonly considered as to be the critical test for having a Theory of Mind (ToM). For correct predictions or explanations of other peoples' behavior it is necessary to understand that mental states are sometimes independent of reality and misrepresent the real state of the world. In contrast, when people hold true beliefs, predictions and explanations about behavior can simply be derived from reality. Previous neuroimaging studies with adults suggest that the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) are engaged in false belief reasoning. However, studies investigating the neural correlates of belief reasoning in children are rare. Using cartoon stories that depicted an unexpected transfer, we compared false belief reasoning with true belief reasoning in children of a narrow age range between 10 and 12 years and in adults. In both groups, the dorsal medial frontal cortex was activated during false versus true belief reasoning. In contrast to adults, children did not selectively recruit the rTPJ during false belief reasoning. We found a group by belief interaction in the right rostral PFC and the posterior cingulate cortex. In these areas, children compared to adults showed increased activity associated with false belief reasoning in contrast to true belief reasoning. These results implicate modulation of the cortical network that underlies false belief reasoning during development and far beyond the time children successfully master false belief tasks. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Theory of Mind Mentalizing Belief reasoning Development Children fMRI 1. Introduction The understanding of false beliefs is commonly considered to be the critical test for having a Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to represent, explain and predict people's behavior with respect to their mental states. False belief attribution requires a decoupling between a person's mental representation of the world and the real state of the world. The understanding that a mental state (such as a belief) can misrepresent reality enables a person to predict and explain other people's action correctly. A classical task for testing false belief understanding is the so-called unexpected transfer task, in which a character (e.g. Maxi) leaves an object in one location (e.g. the drawer) and while he or she is outside the room the object is transferred to a new location (Wimmer and Perner, 1983). Whereas 3-year- old children fail this task and claim that Maxi would look for BRAIN RESEARCH 1354 (2010) 123 – 131 ⁎ Corresponding author. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 84, D-93053 Regensburg, Germany. Fax: +49 941 9412053. E-mail address: monika.sommer@medbo.de (M. Sommer). 0006-8993/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010.07.057 available at www.sciencedirect.com www.elsevier.com/locate/brainres