Brain network in infants found

London, March 8: Researchers have identified the brain network which emerges in infants around four years of age and enables them to predict what others think, an advance that may lead to better understanding of developmental disorders like autism.

According to the scientists, including those from the University College London in the United Kingdom, infants use two different nerve networks in their brains, which mature at different rates, to predict others' behaviour by taking on their perspective.

The study, published in the prestigious scientific journal PNAS, referred to these brain structures as regions for implicit and explicit “Theory of Mind”, which mature at different ages to fulfil their function.

According to the scientists, a region called the supramarginal gyrus that supports non-verbal action prediction matures earlier.

They said this region is also involved in visual and emotional perspective taking. “This enables younger children to predict how people will act,”said study co-author Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Germany.

“The temporoparietal junction and precuneus through which we understand what others think -and not just what they feel and see or how they will act — only develops to fulfil this function at the age of four years,” Wiesmann added.

The study said there's already another mechanism for a basic form of perspective taking by which very young children simply adopt the other's view.