Rethinking The Brain's Mind Modules?

Neuroscientists are interested in how brains interact socially. One of the main topics of study is 'mentalizing' aka 'theory of mind', the ability to accurately attribute mental states - such as beliefs and emotions - to other people. It is widely believed that the brain has specific areas for this - i.e. social "modules" (although today most neuroscientists are shy about using that word, it's basically what's at issue.) But two new papers out this week suggest that people can still mentalize successfully after damage to "key parts of the theory of mind network". Herbet et al, writing in Cortex, showed few effects of surgical removal of the right frontal lobe in 10 brain tumour patients. On two different mentalizing tasks, they showed that removal caused either no decline in performance, or only a transient one.