To Understand The Private Event Related Potential Research And Communication Goals

Intention understanding is very important for establishing a harmony interpersonal relationship in our daily life. Understanding minds is the cognitive basis of successful social interaction, while human mental activity often happens at the moment of social interaction among two or multiple persons instead of only one-person. Theory of mind (ToM) refers to understanding other’s mental states, such as beliefs, intentions, emotions, and thoughts, to predict other’s behaviors. The concept of attribution of intentions to others is a central element of ToM. In the current research, the authors employ the event related potentials (ERPs) technology to explore the neural dynamic processing of understanding others’intentions while the subjects observing the pictures.There were two parts in the research. In study1, we used ERPs to explore the cognitive neural mechanisms of private and communicative intentions understanding. To address this question, we recorded the electrical brain activity from16healthy adults while they were performing an intention task that included three types of intentions:1) self-oriented;2) other-oriented;3) object-oriented. Electrophysiological results showed a significantly larger amplitude peak of N250over the parietal sites for self-oriented condition compared to other-oriented and object-oriented conditions. At a later stage (i.e., from300ms to600ms), the amplitudes of the late positive component (LPC) for communicative intentions were more positive than those for the private and physical conditions. Furthermore, the amplitude was also significantly larger for self-oriented intentions compared to the object-oriented intentions from400to600ms. Together these results provide preliminary electrophysiological evidence that the temporal brain dynamics sustaining the attribution of self-oriented (private) intentions versus socially oriented (communicative) intentions.Study2was a supplementary and intensive study of study1. In study2, in order to characterize the time course of the communicative intention inference (vs. non-interactive intention) in the brain, we employed the ERPs technology to record the participants’electrical brain activity while they were performing an intention inference task that included three types of intentions:1) kindness intention;2) hostility intention;3) non-interactive intention. Electrophysiological results showed a significantly larger amplitude peak of N2over the frontal or midline sites for kindness condition compared to hostility and non-interactive conditions. At a later stage (i.e., from300ms to500ms), the amplitude peak of the P3for hostility intentions were more positive than those for the kindness condition over the parietal, central, midline sites as well as the right hemisphere. Together these results provide preliminary electrophysiological evidence that the temporal brain dynamics sustaining the understanding of kindness intentions versus hostility intentions.