ArticleNature neuroscience2026
A neural signature of adaptive mentalization.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Thalamocortical orchestration of human theory of mind.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A neural signature of adaptive mentalization.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural mechanisms underlying decisions to express or suppress emotions.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- (Mal)adaptive Mentalizing in the Cognitive Hierarchy, and Its Link to Paranoia.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mentalization, inferring others' emotions and intentions, is crucial for human social interactions and is impaired in various brain disorders. While previous neuroscience research has focused on static mentalization strategies, we know little about how the brain adaptively selects which strategies to use at any given moment. Here we investigate this core aspect of mentalization with computational modeling and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during interactive strategic games. We find that most participants can adapt their strategies to the changing sophistication of their opponents, though there are considerable individual differences. Model-based fMRI analyses identify a distributed brain network in which activity and connectivity track this mentalization-belief adaptation. The extent to which people update their beliefs about others' sophistication can be predicted out of sample from neural activity, providing a neural signature of adaptive mentalization. Our model elucidates the neural basis of mentalization ability and provides a method for assessing these capabilities in healthy and clinical populations.
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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.