Abstract
Studies on perspective taking for mental attribution/representation have been reported greater activities in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during performing tasks from third-person perspective (3PP) than first-person perspective (1PP). However, because they used different stimuli for each perspective condition, different mental processes might be involved in each condition. To directly investigate the perspective specific activity, we focused on reasoning with same stimuli for each perspective and compared brain activities with fMRI. Participants were presented with four-panel cartoons panel-by-panel, then judged the appropriateness of the fourth panel from each perspective. Consequently, in MPFC, rostral areas were significantly more activated in 3PP, and caudal areas in 1PP. Furthermore, TPJ was significantly activated bilaterally in 3PP. These results suggest distinct brain regions for perspective specific processing of reasoning.
