Neurosalience #S6E2 with Charlotte Wiesmann - Inferring white matter connections through developmental milestones

"AI is really bad at perspective taking…"

Dr. Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann is a cognitive neuroscientist exploring how the human social brain takes shape in early life. She is a Professor at the University of Technology Nuremberg and directs the Research Group on Social Brain Development at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. Her research blends developmental psychology, brain imaging, and computational modeling to uncover how infants begin to infer other people’s beliefs, intentions and mental states. 

In this conversation, Dr. Wiesmann unpacks how children’s brains develop the capacity for social understanding and theory of mind. Drawing on developmental psychology and neuroimaging, she reveals how the brain transforms as children first succeed on false-belief tasks, a fleeting yet powerful window into the emergence of the social mind. Within this context, the conversation explores white matter maturation, environmental influences, and brain plasticity, offering fresh insights into how studying infant development can inform the future of AI. Join the conversation to discover how early brain development is reshaping our understanding of our social minds.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Chapters:

00:00 - A Journey from Physics to Neuroscience

14:25 - Neural Bases of Early Childhood Theory of Mind

21:58 - False Belief Task and Theory of Mind

25:11 - Attention Schema for Consciousness

27:14 - Primary Areas Involved in Theory of Mind

31:24 - Impact of Neuro Deficits on Social Cognition

33:57 - Role of Environment and Timing on Social Cognition

37:11 - Implicit and Explicit Mechanisms of Social Development

45:02 - Social Cognition Across Species

47:37 - Connecting Neural Code to Social Cognition

49:56 - Temporal Progression in Theory of Mind Tasks

54:54 - Future Research Directions in Understanding Social Cognition

01:00:08 - Infant Learning Inspires AI Development

01:04:50 - Advice for Aspiring Scientists

Works mentioned:

14:31 -  White matter maturation is associated with the emergence of Theory of Mind in early childhood

37:20 -  Two systems for thinking about others’ thoughts in the developing brain

49:50 -  Timing matters: disentangling the neurocognitive sequence of mentalizing

Episode producers:

Xuqian Michelle Li, Karthik Sama