Age differences in neural activity related to mentalizing during person perception

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Aging

Background:

• Mentalizing, the ability to understand others' mental states, is crucial for social interaction.
• Older adults (OA) exhibit decreased medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activation, suggesting potential declines in mentalizing capacity.
• It remains unclear if reduced mPFC activation in OA reflects less spontaneous mentalizing during real-time social perception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether reduced mPFC activation in older adults (OA) correlates with diminished spontaneous mentalizing during person perception.
• To examine age-related differences in mPFC activity and its relationship with mentalizing abilities, particularly when perceiving ingroup versus outgroup faces.
• To explore how mPFC activity during face perception relates to individuals' capacity to infer mental states.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity in younger adults (YA) and OA while they viewed faces from different racial groups.
• Participants completed a mentalizing task during fMRI and a subsequent task assessing their ability to infer mental states from faces.
• An mPFC region of interest was defined based on the mentalizing task to analyze age differences in activation during person perception.

Main Results:

• OA demonstrated lower mPFC activation compared to YA during person perception.
• OA's mPFC activity during face perception positively correlated with their performance on an independent mentalizing task.
• YA's mPFC activity differentiated between ingroup and outgroup faces, whereas OA's did not, suggesting reduced ability to individuate outgroup members.

Conclusions:

• Reduced mPFC activation in OA during person perception may be linked to their actual ability to detect mental states in others.
• Age-related differences in mPFC function during social perception could impair the ability of older adults to individuate members of outgroups.
• These findings highlight potential neural mechanisms underlying age-related changes in social cognition and intergroup perception.