Reasoning about cooperation and deception leads to differential brain activation in Theory of Mind tasks

Theory of mind enables us to evaluate intentions and expectations of other people in social interactions, allowing – among other things – to determine whether another person is willing to cooperate or plans to deceive us. In cooperation, intentions and expectations of the protagonists match, whereas in deception intentions and expectations diverge. Thus, cooperation and deception scenarios can constitute complex forms of „true belief“ and „false belief“ situations, respectively. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine those brain areas of the theory-of-mind network that are involved in reasoni…