{"id":217178,"date":"2025-07-04T06:14:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T11:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/uncertainty-not-just-social-context-drives-brain-activity-when-we-read-the-minds-of-others-psychologists-find"},"modified":"2025-07-04T06:14:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T11:14:35","slug":"uncertainty-not-just-social-context-drives-brain-activity-when-we-read-the-minds-of-others-psychologists-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/uncertainty-not-just-social-context-drives-brain-activity-when-we-read-the-minds-of-others-psychologists-find","title":{"rendered":"Uncertainty\u2014not just social context\u2014drives brain activity when we \u2018read the minds\u2019 of others, psychologists find"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/uncertainty-not-just-social-context-drives-brain-activity-when-we-read-the-minds-of-others-psychologists-find.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Imagine you are about to confront a friend about a hurtful comment she made and are trying to predict her response. Depending on what you know about your friend, you might infer that she will understand where you\u2019re coming from and apologize, get defensive, or respond with criticism of you.<\/p>\n<p>This process of trying to predict other people\u2019s beliefs, intentions, and emotions is known as mentalizing, and the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) is one of the key brain regions that make up what is known as the \u201cmentalizing network.\u201d Studies have shown that the network is more engaged during mentalizing than when people make other kinds of inferences, such as about objects\u2014like the comfort of a chair\u2014or human physical traits.<\/p>\n<p>But new research from psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania challenges the interpretation of these findings by highlighting a confounding variable in DMPFC activation: uncertainty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine you are about to confront a friend about a hurtful comment she made and are trying to predict her response. Depending on what you know about your friend, you might infer that she will understand where you\u2019re coming from and apologize, get defensive, or respond with criticism of you. This process of trying to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}