Distinct regions of medial rostral prefrontal cortex supporting social and nonsocial functions

While some recent neuroimaging studies have implicated medialrostral prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in ‘mentalizing’and self-reflection, others have implicated this region in attentiontowards perceptual vs self-generated information. In order toreconcile these seemingly contradictory findings, we used fMRIto investigate MPFC activity related to these two functionsin a factorial design. Participants performed two separate tasks,each of which alternated between ‘stimulus-oriented phases’(SO), where participants attended to task-relevant perceptualinformation, and ‘stimulus-independent phases’ (SI),where participants performed the same tasks in the absence ofsuch information. In half of the blocks (‘mentalizingcondition’), participants were instructed that they wereperforming these tasks in collaboration with an experimenter;in other blocks (‘non-mentalizing condition’), participantswere instructed that the experimenter was not involved. In fact,the tasks were identical in these conditions. Neuroimaging datarevealed adjacent but clearly distinct regions of activationwithin MPFC related to (i) mentalizing vs non-mentalizing conditions(relatively caudal/superior) and (ii) SO vs SI attention (relativelyrostral/inferior). These results generalized from one task tothe other, suggesting a new axis of functional organizationwithin MPFC.