PMID- 22766167
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20130129
LR  - 20120828
IS  - 1095-9572 (Electronic)
IS  - 1053-8119 (Linking)
VI  - 63
IP  - 1
DP  - 2012 Oct 15
TI  - Neural evidence that utterance-processing entails mentalizing: the case of irony.
PG  - 25-39
LID - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.046 [doi]
AB  - It is now well established that communicators interpret others' mental states 
      through what has been called "Theory of Mind" (ToM). From a linguistic-pragmatics 
      perspective, this mentalizing ability is considered critical because it is 
      assumed that the linguistic code in all utterances underdetermines the speaker's 
      meaning, leaving a vital role for ToM to fill the gap. From a neuroscience 
      perspective, understanding others' intentions has been shown to activate a neural 
      ToM network that includes the right and left temporal parietal junction (rTPJ, 
      lTPJ), the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the precuneus (PC). Surprisingly, 
      however, there are no studies - to our knowledge - that aim to uncover a direct, 
      on-line link between language processing and ToM through neuroimaging. This is 
      why we focus on verbal irony, an obviously pragmatic phenomenon that compels a 
      listener to detect the speaker's (dissociated, mocking) attitude (Wilson, 2009). 
      In the present fMRI investigation, we compare participants' comprehension of 18 
      target sentences as contexts make them either ironic or literal. Consider an 
      opera singer who tells her interlocutor: "Tonight we gave a superb performance!" 
      when the performance in question was clearly awful (making the statement ironic) 
      or very good (making the statement literal). We demonstrate that the ToM network 
      becomes active while a participant is understanding verbal irony. Moreover, we 
      demonstrate - through Psychophysiological Interactions (PPI) analyses - that ToM 
      activity is directly linked with language comprehension processes. The paradigm, 
      its predictions, and the reported results contrast dramatically with those from 
      seven prior fMRI studies on irony.
CI  - Copyright (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
FAU - Spotorno, Nicola
AU  - Spotorno N
AD  - Laboratory L2C2, CNRS Universite Lyon 1 FRE3406, 69675 Bron CEDEX, France. 
      nicola.spotorno@isc.cnrs.fr
FAU - Koun, Eric
AU  - Koun E
FAU - Prado, Jerome
AU  - Prado J
FAU - Van Der Henst, Jean-Baptiste
AU  - Van Der Henst JB
FAU - Noveck, Ira A
AU  - Noveck IA
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
DEP - 20120702
PL  - United States
TA  - Neuroimage
JT  - NeuroImage
JID - 9215515
SB  - IM
MH  - Adult
MH  - Auditory Perception/*physiology
MH  - Brain/*physiology
MH  - Brain Mapping/*methods
MH  - Comprehension/*physiology
MH  - Female
MH  - Humans
MH  - *Language
MH  - Male
MH  - Nerve Net/*physiology
MH  - Theory of Mind/*physiology
EDAT- 2012/07/07 06:00
MHDA- 2013/01/30 06:00
CRDT- 2012/07/07 06:00
PHST- 2012/01/07 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2012/05/19 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2012/06/24 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2012/07/07 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2012/07/07 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2013/01/30 06:00 [medline]
AID - S1053-8119(12)00661-1 [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.046 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Neuroimage. 2012 Oct 15;63(1):25-39. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.046. Epub 
      2012 Jul 2.