近日，北京师范大学万小红研究组探明了颞顶连接选择性地调节心理化中的社会投射。相关论文于2025年8月10日发表于国际顶尖学术期刊《神经科学通报》杂志上。

在双元任务中通过fMRI，参与者估计自己的信心（元认知）和伴侣的信心（心智化），课题组发现SOM在元认知过程中严重依赖于前扣带背皮层（dACC）编码的自信。颞顶连接（TPJ）通过与dACC的有效连接来跟踪SOM的大小，而伴侣的信心在背内侧前额叶皮层中明显地表现出来。此外，通过经颅磁刺激破坏TPJ活性会在电上减弱SOM的作用。这些发现将社会投射从相互竞争的框架中分离出来，并表明TPJ在心理化过程中调解社会投射中起着关键作用，促进了对自我如何构建社会认知的机制理解。

研究人员表示，心理化是一种从有限的社会信息推断他人心理状态的认知过程，通常由社会投射促进，社会投射是一种产生自我-他人融合（SOM）的“自我代理”策略。虽然SOM在概念上与模拟或理论驱动的过程重叠，但其神经基础仍未得到解决。

附：英文原文

Title: Temporoparietal Junction Selectively Mediates Social Projection in Mentalizing

Author: Jiang, Shaohan, Wang, Sidong, Wan, Xiaohong

Issue&Volume: 2025-08-10

Abstract: Mentalizing, the cognitive process of inferring others’ mental states from limited social information, is often facilitated by social projection, a “self-as-proxy” strategy that engenders self-other mergence (SOM). While SOM overlaps conceptually with the simulation or theory-driven processes, its neural basis remains unresolved. Using fMRI during a dyadic task where participants estimated both their own confidence (metacognition) and a partner’s confidence (mentalizing), we found that SOM critically depended on self-confidence encoded in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) during metacognition. The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) tracked SOM magnitude via effective connectivity with the dACC, while the partner’s confidence was distinctly represented in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Further, disrupting TPJ activity via transcranial magnetic stimulation causally attenuated the SOM effect. These findings disentangle social projection from competing frameworks and suggest that the TPJ plays a pivotal role in mediating social projection during mentalizing, advancing the mechanistic understanding of how the self scaffolds social cognition.

DOI: 10.1007/s12264-025-01483-4

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12264-025-01483-4