SynthesisJournal of cognitive neuroscience2012
A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of self- and other judgments reveals a spatial gradient for mentalizing in medial prefrontal cortex.
Synthesis in Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 389 papers, 13 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
389 citing papers in PubMed, 13 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Neural Correlates of Direct vs. Generative Retrieval of Episodic Autobiographical Memory.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Psychopathy and medial frontal cortex: A systematic review reveals predominantly null relationships.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Unpacking reappraisal: a systematic review of fMRI studies of distancing and reinterpretation.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Pooled it
- The neural signature of reality-monitoring: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies.Human brain mapping · 2023Pooled it
- Neural systems underlying RDoC social constructs: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Meta-analytic evidence that mindfulness training alters resting state default mode network connectivity.Scientific reports · 2022Pooled it
- Tasks activating the default mode network map multiple functional systems.Brain structure & function · 2022Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of human prediction error for incentives, perception, cognition, and action.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Pooled it
- Large-scale functional coactivation patterns reflect the structural connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Building the bodily self-awareness: Evidence for the convergence between interoceptive and exteroceptive information in a multilevel kernel density analysis study.Human brain mapping · 2020Pooled it
- Exploring Representation of Diverse Samples in fMRI Studies Conducted in Patients With Cardiac-Related Chronic Illness: A Focused Systematic Review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Functional Neural Correlates of Anosognosia in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease: a Systematic Review.Neuropsychology review · 2019Pooled it
- Incorporating the social context into neurocognitive models of adolescent decision-making: A neuroimaging meta-analysis.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2019Pooled it
- Auditory Hyperresponsivity in Chronic Back Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Pain Reprocessing Therapy.Annals of neurology · 2026Trial
- Targeting the superior temporal gyrus with real-time fMRI neurofeedback: A pilot study of the indirect effects on self-referential processes in schizophrenia.Schizophrenia research · 2024Trial
- Stimulation of the Social Brain Improves Perspective Selection in Older Adults: A HD-tDCS Study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Trial
- Decoding representations of personally familiar others in the default mode network.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Domain-specific neural correlates of self-evaluation in relation to sense of acceptance and rejection.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Intuition criticizes self, analysis protects mother: evidence from an ERPs study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural responses to conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback correlate with trait emotion regulation and daily support.Communications psychology · 2026Article
329 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The distinction between processes used to perceive and understand the self and others has received considerable attention in psychology and neuroscience. Brain findings highlight a role for various regions, in particular the medial PFC (mPFC), in supporting judgments about both the self and others. We performed a meta-analysis of 107 neuroimaging studies of self- and other-related judgments using multilevel kernel density analysis [Kober, H., & Wager, T. D. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging data. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, 1, 293-300, 2010]. We sought to determine what brain regions are reliably involved in each judgment type and, in particular, what the spatial and functional organization of mPFC is with respect to them. Relative to nonmentalizing judgments, both self- and other judgments were associated with activity in mPFC, ranging from ventral to dorsal extents, as well as common activation of the left TPJ and posterior cingulate. A direct comparison between self- and other judgments revealed that ventral mPFC as well as left ventrolateral PFC and left insula were more frequently activated by self-related judgments, whereas dorsal mPFC, in addition to bilateral TPJ and cuneus, was more frequently activated by other-related judgments. Logistic regression analyses revealed that ventral and dorsal mPFC lay at opposite ends of a functional gradient: The z coordinates reported in individual studies predicted whether the study involved self- or other-related judgments, which were associated with increasingly ventral or dorsal portions of mPFC, respectively. These results argue for a distributed rather than localizationist account of mPFC organization and support an emerging view on the functional heterogeneity of mPFC.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.