One of the hallmark stages of mental development when we are children occurs around the ages of 3-4 where a child transitions from thinking that everyone is always thinks the same way they do, to realizing that everyone has their own set of mental processes, their own way of thinking, their own beliefs. It is at this stage that we shift from thinking that others are always telling the truth, to realizing that it is possible for others to hold false beliefs (IE not everything that everyone tells you is correct, some people believe things that are wrong). The ability to recognize these things is known as Theory of Mind.

Theory of mind plays a key role in allowing for the complex interactions that we have with one another and helps to facilitate things like cooperation, and define our sense of morality.[2] One key aspect of theory of mind is the ability to understand whether or not someone else is holding a false belief (or at least expressing one to you). [3] This is usually tested by watching how subjects deal with someone presenting them a false reality about an object (false reality meaning lying to them about its shape or content).[4]

Until now, researchers know when this development happens in the brain, when 'Theory of Mind' emerges. However little is known about the neurological relationship that it comes from. AKA we don't understand what is changing in the brain that allows this understanding to come out!

Here we will briefly discuss an article published in Nature Communications titled "White matter maturation is associated with the emergence of Theory of Mind in early childhood."

What Is White Matter?

So above is a picture of a brain. You can see that there are two different colors to the tissues, there are outer tissues which are darker colored (called grey matter) and inner tissues that are white (that is the white matter).

White matter is basically just a bunch of a part nerve cells, axons, which are responsible for connecting the various grey matter sections together. The grey matter sections are the main body portion of the nerve cell (neurons). So think of grey matter as where the processing of the brain takes place, and white matter as the network that allows information to be moved around.

What They Doing In This Study?

They were using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor fractional anisotropy (FA) (fractional anisotropy is a technique which allows researchers to monitor connectivity in the brain [6] in the brains of children aged 3-4 in response to them being presented with 'false beliefs.' AKA they were lying to kids and seeing how their brains light up. You might be thinking, how has this never been done before? Well it has, but always on older subjects, ones aged 6 and up, who already have a fully established 'Theory of Mind'.

So they chose kids in this 3-4 age range that both had and lacked the ability to recognize false beliefs, lied to them and looked for differences in how their brains worked.

What Did They Find?

The children were asked their thoughts about a puppet. This puppet had false beliefs about the location of an object (the puppet was a damned liar)...

I hope the puppet didn't look like this

The performance of the children was in line with what had been previously reported, the ability to understand the puppet was full of shit didn't happen until around age 4. The younger children struggled. This allowed the researchers to map the areas of the brain where the activity correlated with the children's 'score' on the test measuring there 'theory of mind' all under the same conditions.

Which is what we are looking at here are the regions of the brain where the researchers identified that connectivity is important for 'Theory of Mind.' That is derived from comparing the activity of the brains of the children who had it with those who did not. All of these important areas are in the "white matter" regions of the brain. The researchers here have mapped the precise regions of the brain, responsible for our abilities to understand false beliefs.

They discuss that their results are important because they show that in addition to classical regions of the brain thought to be involved in the processing of beliefs, that the connectivity between these regions is especially important in the emergence of the 'Theory of Mind'.

TL;DR

Researchers have identified through MRI imaging of children's brains, while being lied to by a puppet... that the connections in the brain's white matter, are essential for our ability to understand others beliefs and discern whether or not those beliefs are true.

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
2. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cd.96/abstract
3. https://philpapers.org/rec/PREDTC
4. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/chwe/austen/wimmerperner.pdf
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_matter
6. http://www.ajnr.org/content/28/2/226.full

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