# Mentalizing Network **Entity class:** Functional brain network **Domain:** Social cognition / neuroscience **Maturity:** Developing ## Definition The **mentalizing network** is a set of brain regions recruited when a person represents another agent's beliefs, intentions, perspective, or likely response. It is a neural route into the broader cognitive capacity described by [[wiki/Theory of Mind|Theory of Mind]]. ## Prayer Context Functional imaging of highly religious participants has reported stronger social-cognition recruitment during improvised personal prayer than during formalized recitation. [[blog/20261007 - The Prayers of Primates|The Prayers of Primates]] uses that distinction to compare interpersonal prayer with the work of modeling another mind. ## Evidence Boundary Recruitment of a social-cognition network shows how participants process the task; it does not establish whether the represented addressee exists, whether all prayer uses the same mechanism, or whether religious experience is reducible to one network. ## Relationships - [[wiki/Theory of Mind|Theory of Mind]] - [[wiki/Submission to Hierarchy|Submission to Hierarchy]] - [[wiki/Big Gods|Big Gods]] - [[wiki/Human Animality|Human Animality]] ## Sources / Provenance - Uffe Schjoedt et al., “Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer,” *Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience* (2009).