It seems we each have a part of our brain dedicated to making judgments about other people's judgments.

    This was the claim made by Rebecca Saxe, a cognitive neuroscientist from MIT and now leader of the Saxelab. She found that the right temporo-parietal junction （RTPJ） was responsible for how we analyse other's thoughts.

    She studied children and presented them with tasks that called on them to imagine how other people were feeling.

    One task involved thinking of a pirate who had put his sandwich on a chest and then left. The wind blew his sandwich on the floor, then a second pirate arrived and placed his sandwich on the chest. Which sandwich would the first pirate take when he returned?

    Older children suggested that the first pirate may have thought the sandwich on the chest was his, while the three-year-olds presumed that he would take the sandwich on the chest because his was dirty and did not consider he may have taken it by accident. The youngest children were not able to make the imaginative leap into someone else's mind.

    The team recorded activity in the RTPJ as these tasks were undertaken and discovered that it increased with the age of the child.

    Saxe went on to suggest that by interfering with this area of the brain, reactions to other people could be modified. You could use "magnetic pulses to change people's judgements of other people's judgments," she said.

    Just think what would happen if this technology got into the hands of military. Well, admitted Saxe, the Pentagon is already trying to recruit her. "They're calling, but I'm not taking the calls," she said.

    似乎我們每個(gè)人在大腦中都有一部分被用來(lái)對(duì)別人的判斷做出判斷。

    這是來(lái)自麻省理工學(xué)院的認(rèn)知神經(jīng)科學(xué)家麗蓓卡 薩克斯作出的推斷，她現(xiàn)在是 Saxelab 實(shí)驗(yàn)室的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人。她發(fā)現(xiàn)右腦顳顱結(jié)合部（RTPJ）負(fù)責(zé)我們?nèi)绾畏治鰟e的人的思想。

    她研究孩子們，并且向他們提出任務(wù)，要求他們想像其他人如何思考。

    一個(gè)任務(wù)涉及思考一個(gè)海盜，他把他的三明治放在箱子上，然后離開。風(fēng)把他的三明治刮到了地板上。然后第二個(gè)海盜到達(dá)，并且把他的三明治里放在箱子上。第一個(gè)海盜回來(lái)的時(shí)候能拿走哪一塊三明治？

    年長(zhǎng)的孩子們提出第一個(gè)海盜可能認(rèn)為箱子上的這塊三明治是他的，而 3 歲的孩子們則推測(cè)他可能拿走箱子上的三明治，因?yàn)樗�的三明治臟了而且認(rèn)為他不可能意外地把它拿走。年幼的孩子們不能作出富于想象力的跳躍進(jìn)入另外某個(gè)人的想法。

    這個(gè)研究小組記錄了在承擔(dān)這些任務(wù)時(shí) RTPJ 的活動(dòng)，并且發(fā)現(xiàn)它隨兒童的年齡增加。

    薩克斯繼續(xù)提出，通過(guò)干擾大腦的這個(gè)部分可以修改對(duì)其他人的反應(yīng)。你可以使用"磁脈沖來(lái)改變?nèi)藗儗?duì)他人判斷的判斷，"她說(shuō)。

    試想如果這個(gè)技術(shù)進(jìn)到軍方手里將會(huì)發(fā)生什么。哦，薩克斯承認(rèn)，五角大樓已經(jīng)在試圖招募她。"他們打了電話，但是我沒(méi)有接這些電話，"她說(shuō)。