"Why do they do it?": The short-story task for measuring fiction-based mentalizing in autistic and non-autistic individuals

This study aimed to validate the short-story-task (SST) based on Dodell-Feder et al. as an instrument to quantify the ability of mentalizing and to differentiate between non-autistic adults and autistic adults, who may have acquired rules to interpret the actions of non-autistic individuals. Autistic (N = 32) and non-autistic (N = 32) adult participants were asked to read "The End of Something" by Ernest Hemingway and to answer implicit and explicit mentalizing questions, and comprehension questions. Furthermore, verbal and nonverbal IQ was measured and participants were asked how much fiction they read each month. Mentalizing performance was normally distributed for autistic and non-autistic participants with autistic participants scoring in the lower third of the distribution. ROC (receiver operator curve) analysis revealed the task to be an excellent discriminator between autistic and non-autistic participants. A linear regression analysis identified number of books read, years of education and group as significant predictors. Overall, the SST is a promising measure of mentalizing. On the one hand, it differentiates among non-autistic individuals and on the other hand it is sensitive towards performance differences in mentalizing among autistic adults. Implications for interventions are discussed.

Differential responses of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and right posterior superior temporal sulcus to spontaneous mentalizing

Previous research suggests a role of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in metacognitive representation of social information, while the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) has been linked to social perception. This study targeted these functional roles in the context of spontaneous mentalizing. An animated shapes task was presented to 46 subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Stimuli consisted of video clips depicting animated shapes whose movement patterns prompt spontaneous mentalizing or simple intention attribution. Based on their differential response during spontaneous mentalizing, both regions were characterized with respect to their task-dependent connectivity profiles and their associations with autistic traits. Functional network analyses revealed highly localized coupling of the right pSTS with visual areas in the lateral occipital cortex, while the dmPFC showed extensive coupling with instances of large-scale control networks and temporal areas including the right pSTS. Autistic traits were related to mentalizing-specific activation of the dmPFC and to the strength of connectivity between the dmPFC and posterior temporal regions. These results are in good agreement with the hypothesized roles of the dmPFC and right pSTS for metacognitive representation and perception-based processing of social information, respectively, and further inform their implication in social behavior linked to autism. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3791-3803, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Specificity, reliability and sensitivity of social brain responses during spontaneous mentalizing

The debilitating effects of social dysfunction in many psychiatric disorders prompt the need for systems-level biomarkers of social abilities that can be applied in clinical populations and longitudinal studies. A promising neuroimaging approach is the animated shapes paradigm based on so-called Frith-Happé animations (FHAs) which trigger spontaneous mentalizing with minimal cognitive demands. Here, we presented FHAs during functional magnetic resonance imaging to 46 subjects and examined the specificity and sensitivity of the elicited social brain responses. Test-retest reliability was additionally assessed in 28 subjects within a two-week interval. Specific responses to spontaneous mentalizing were observed in key areas of the social brain with high sensitivity and independently from the variant low-level kinematics of the FHAs. Mentalizing-specific responses were well replicable on the group level, suggesting good-to-excellent cross-sectional reliability [intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs): 0.40-0.99; dice overlap at P_uncorr<0.001: 0.26-1.0]. Longitudinal reliability on the single-subject level was more heterogeneous (ICCs of 0.40-0.79; dice overlap at P_uncorr<0.001: 0.05-0.43). Posterior temporal sulcus activation was most reliable, including a robust differentiation between subjects across sessions (72% of voxels with ICC>0.40). These findings encourage the use of FHAs in neuroimaging research across developmental stages and psychiatric conditions, including the identification of biomarkers and pharmacological interventions.