Nature & Nurture #78: Dr. Jason Mitchell - The Neuroscience of Mindreading

Dr. Jason Mitchell is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where he directs the Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. His research uses a combination of neuroimaging and behavioral measures to investigate the cognitive processes that support inferences about the psychological states of other people and introspective awareness of the self.

In this episode we introduce social neuroscience as a field of research at the intersection between social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and discuss the neuroscience of mindreading. Mindreading, in this context, refers to our social cognitive capacity for thinking about the thoughts and feelings of others, otherwise known as mentalizing or theory of mind. Jason and I discuss how mindreading relates to other processes such as introspection, and how mindreading may be accomplished either through mental simulation (placing oneself in another’s shoes) or heuristics. Next, we discuss Jason’s own research on the neuroscience of introspection and mindreading, and his findings that mindreading looks more similar to introspection in the brain when reasoning about others more similar to us. Lastly, we discuss more exotic forms of mindreading such as animal theory of mind and empathizing with inanimate objects or cartoons, and what these processes tell us about the cognitive mechanisms underlying mindreading and empathy.