Differential involvement of the posterior temporal cortex in mentalizing but not perspective taking

Understanding and predicting other peoples mental states and behavior are important prerequisites for social interactions. The capacity to attribute mental states such as desires, thoughts or intentions to oneself or others is referred to as mentalizing. The right posterior temporal cortex at the temporalparietal junction has been associated with mentalizing but also with taking someone elses spatial perspective onto the worldpossibly an important prerequisite for mentalizing. Here, we directly compared the neural correlates of mentalizing and perspective taking using the same stimulus material. We found significantly increased neural activity in the right posterior segment of the superior temporal sulcus only during mentalizing but not perspective taking. Our data further clarify the role of the posterior temporal cortex in social cognition by showing that it is involved in processing information from socially salient visual cues in situations that require the inference about other peoples mental states.