ERC Starting Grant · 2025
Simulating Other Minds in Autism
The mere presence of another person automatically triggers powerful processes of belief computation in our brains. This spontaneous and well-established Theory of Mind (ToM) ability is considered vital for efficient social interactions. Yet, we still know little about the mechanisms allowing the brain to automatically, and without apparent mental effort, keep track of who is believing what. I argue that the role of modeling others’ attention is an overlooked and a key factor in this process. I propose the novel hypothesis that the brain makes use of an implicit model of others’ attention, recently characterized by me, featuring the simplified construct of implied motion ‘beams’ linking…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.