Parts of Brain Involved In Social Cognition Could Be In Place By Age 6

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Parts of Brain Involved In Social Cognition Could Be In Place By Age 6

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       Social cognition—the ability to think about the minds and mental

states of others—is essential for human beings. In the last decade, a group of

regions has been discovered in the human brain that are specifically used for

social cognition. A new study in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal Child

Development investigates these brain regions for the first time in human

children. The study has implications for children with autism.

      Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Yale

University scanned the brains of 13 children ages 6 to 11 as they listened to

children's stories. At the moment the plot of the stories revealed what a

character wanted, believed, or knew, or presented the mental state of the

character, the researchers observed increased activity in these specific brain

regions

      When the story turned to other topics—such as the physical world or

the visual appearance of the characters—activity in these brain regions went

back down.

      On the whole, activity in the " social brain " of the children—the

parts of their brains that are used for social cognition—looked very similar

to the patterns previously observed in adults. But there was one intriguing

difference: One of the brain regions, the right tempero-parietal junction,

appeared to change its function between the ages of 6 and 11. At age 6, the

brain region played a general role in thinking about people, but by age 11, this

same brain region appeared to take on a more specialized role in thinking just

about others' thoughts.

      " What we found—a pattern of typical development—may offer clues

as we study atypical social development, as happens in autism, " according to

Saxe, the Fred and Carole Middleton Career Development Professor of

cognitive neuroscience at MIT, who led the study.

      " Children with autism appear to have specific difficulties thinking

about other people's thoughts. Understanding how human brains typically learn to

think about thoughts may let us detect what is going wrong in an autistic brain,

and maybe even target interventions toward those neural systems, to improve

chances for recovery. "

Love, Gabby. :0)

http://stemcellforautism.blogspot.com/

 

" I know of nobody who is purely Autistic or purely neurotypical. Even God had

some Autistic moments, which is why the planets all spin. " ~ Jerry Newport