Understanding others and the self -  what does brain maturation tell us about early theory of mind development and its relation to the emergence of a self-concept in early childhood?
Human social interaction crucially depends on our ability to understand what others think or believe, an ability referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM). While decades of research assumed that this milestone is reached around the age of 4 years, recently, novel infant ToM tasks have shown that already infants younger than 2 years expect people to act according to their beliefs - even if these differ from the infant’s own beliefs. This has created one of the biggest puzzles of developmental psychology: Why do children consistently fail traditional ToM tasks until the age of 4 years, if already infants understand others' beliefs? The supervisor has recently suggested how the emergence of a self-concept (SELF) and ability to distinguish between self and other might build a link between early- and later-developing ToM abilities.

Here, we want to address these questions with cognitive neuroscience, by combining behavioral and infant functional neuroimaging (fNIRS) tasks of ToM and SELF with brain-structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This combination of methods will allow us to compare the brain regions involved in the novel infant and later-developing traditional ToM tasks, and to study their link to the brain regions involved in SELF.

I have a strong background in combining brain-structural MRI with behavioral ToM tasks in preschool-aged children. My supervisor is a world-leading expert in early ToM and developing cutting-edge neurocognitive tasks for preverbal infants. She was recently awarded an ERC grant to test her theory on the role of SELF for ToM. The current action importantly complements that project by an innovative neuroimaging approach, which uniquely becomes possible through our combined expertise. I will strongly benefit from the infrastructure and expertise in that project, and will be able to learn cutting-edge infant neurocognitive testing methods, crucial for my future career goal of becoming a leading researcher in early-childhood development.