“For healthy people, mind reading is an innate and effortless
ability, even though it’s in fact very complicated. For people
with autism, it’s like doing mental arithmetic.” Mind theory: “The brain regions critical in allowing us to
understand another person’s thoughts are
revealed.” Several years ago, researchers found that, in autistic subjects, facial recognition of others uses the same brain regions as object recognition, not the distinct specialized areas for person recognition. Now, a complementary study shows that patients with Asperger’s syndrome (arguably related to autism) do not use distinctive brain regions, as non-AS subjects do, to solve problems involving figuring out or imagining what another person is thinking or feeling. They have an impairment in the capacity to form a ‘Theory of Mind’; more simply put, empathic ability. Extraordinary to think that specific brain regions subsume this skill; it gives new meaning to the notion of humans as the ‘social animal’. However, reading this research made me wonder (as it turns out in the last paragraph does the study’s author) whether these findings might enable us to probe the claim that other animals — notably chimpanzees — have the capacity for a Theory of Mind. New Scientist