ReviewBehavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)2025
A Quantitative Review of Brain Activation Maps for Mentalizing, Empathy, and Social Interactions: Specifying Commonalities and Differences.
Review in Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cognitive Flexibility as a Mediator Between Mentalization and Symptom Severity in Generalized Anxiety Disorder.Psychiatry investigation · 2026Article
- Neural variability across the transition to motherhood: Enhanced moment-to-moment neural variability during mentalizing in first-time mothers.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Task-dependent increases and decreases of BOLD signal in theory of mind brain regions during strategic social interaction.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2026Article
- Molecular features and tumor location interact to account for preoperative cognitive-emotional status in glioma.Frontiers in neurology · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Humans are inherently social beings, and the quality of their interactions is essential for maintaining physical and mental health. Effective social interaction involves understanding not just people's visible behavior but also the underlying factors like thoughts and emotions. This review investigates the convergence and divergence of meta-analytic brain activation for mentalizing, empathy, and social interaction engagement. To achieve this, we re-analyzed data from our prior meta-analysis on mentalizing and empathy using the same methodology as an existing meta-analysis on social interaction engagement. The comparison of brain activation maps focused on the question of whether the co-activation of cognitive and affective brain systems is an overarching characteristic of intermediate mentalizing/empathy tasks and social interaction engagement. Our findings support the general assumption that social interaction engagement co-recruits cognitive and affective brain systems also implicated in mentalizing and empathy. However, we found little direct overlap of brain activation for intermediate mentalizing/empathy tasks and social interaction engagement. Finally, applying a network neuroscience perspective, we suggest that social interaction engagement, affective/empathy, and intermediate mentalizing/empathy tasks are collectively characterized by co-recruitment of the default mode network and control networks.
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Registered trials
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