EXPLORING NEURAL DYNAMICS OF MENTALIZING THROUGH ERP COMPONENTS: AN EEG RECORDING-BASED INVESTIGATION

The ability to infer one's own and others' mental states through observation of actions and learn about their mutual influence in a social context is a human psychological skill known as mentalizing To study the brain activity underlying these complex processes, EEG recording has proven highly useful due to its temporal resolution, which provides insight into the dynamics of neural responses following tasks such as the visual narrative tasks in the present study. Continuous EEG recording from healthy volunteer participants was conducted to extract important ERP (Event-Related-Potential) components and associate them with the involved regions of interest (ROIs). The task participants (Fifty in total, 29 females and 21 males, aged between 19 and 34) were subjected to required viewing three vignettes illustrating a narrative and associating one of the three alternative ending scenarios proposed in the fourth vignette with it using the corresponding key on the keyboard provided. It was possible to process the EEG signals recorded through a 128-channel headset from each participant and analyze Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) components such as the N170, N400, LPP, and P300. Comparisons between the Baseline, Cognitive andEmotional and Individual vs. Social conditions highlighted the importance of the cognitive condition as the primary neural driver and the emotional component as a reflection of a more complex processing linked to the construction of a strategy for consolidating meaning in narrative representation. Finally, the social context appears to have facilitated the processing and performance in choosing the ending. The study was conducted taking into account the importance of the physiological processes underlying the mentalizing phenomenon as well as the neural correlates involved. Therefore, the results could be useful for integrating and contributing to research and investigations related to psychiatric disease, or for integrating into within-subject designs used by researchers with the aim of evaluating treatment effects, or to compare affective responses across populations