Gaze patterns and brain activations in humans and marmosets in the Frith-Happé theory-of-mind animation task

Abstract
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Abstract

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the cognitive ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. This ability extends even to the attribution of mental states to animations featuring simple geometric shapes, such as the Frith-Happé animations in which two triangles move either purposelessly (Random condition), exhibit purely physical movement (Goal-directed condition), or move as if one triangle is reacting to the other triangle's mental states (ToM condition). While this capacity in humans has been thoroughly established, research on nonhuman primates has yielded inconsistent results. This study explored how marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), a highly social primate species, process Frith-Happé animations by examining gaze patterns and brain activations of marmosets and humans as they observed these animations. We revealed that both marmosets and humans exhibited longer fixations on one of the triangles in ToM animations, compared to other conditions. However, we did not observe the same pattern of longer overall fixation duration on the ToM animations in marmosets as identified in humans. Furthermore, our findings reveal that both species activated extensive and comparable brain networks when viewing ToM versus Random animations, suggesting that marmosets differentiate between these scenarios similarly to humans. While marmosets did not mimic human overall fixation patterns, their gaze behavior and neural activations indicate a distinction between ToM and non-ToM scenarios. This study expands our understanding of nonhuman primate cognitive abilities, shedding light on potential similarities and differences in ToM processing between marmosets and humans.

Data availability

All fMRI and eye tracking data generated and analysed as well as the scripts used have been deposited in Github and the link has been provided in the manuscript. Here the link: https://github.com/audreydureux/Theory-of-mind_Human_Marmosets_Paper

Article and author information

Author details

Audrey Dureux

Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

For correspondence
audrey.dureux@gmail.com

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1687-8347
Alessandro Zanini

Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Janahan Selvanayagam

Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3708-8742
Ravi S Menon

Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Stefan Everling

Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9714-9757

Funding

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (FRN 148365)

Stefan Everling

Canada First Research Excellence Fund

Stefan Everling

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery grant)

Stefan Everling

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experimental methods described were performed in accordance with the guidelines of the Canadian Council of Animal Care policy and a protocol approved by the Animal Care Committee of the University of Western Ontario Council on Animal Care (#2021-111). Animals were monitoring during the acquisition sessions by a veterinary technician.

Human subjects: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Western Ontario and subjects were informed about the experimental procedures and provided informed written consent.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.