Social and monetary reward learning engage overlapping neural substrates.

By Alice Lin, Ralph Adolphs, Antonio Rangel. 2012

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Learning to make choices that yield rewarding outcomes requires the computation of three distinct signals: stimulus values that are used to guide choices at the time of decision making, experienced utility signals that are used to evaluate the outcomes of those decisions and prediction errors that are used to update the values assigned to stimuli during reward learning. Here we investigated whether monetary and social rewards involve overlapping neural substrates during these computations. Subjects engaged in two probabilistic reward learning tasks that were identical except that rewards were either social (pictures of smiling or angry people) or monetary (gaining or losing money). We found substantial overlap between the two types of rewards for all components of the learning process: a common area of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) correlated with stimulus value at the time of choice and another common area of vmPFC correlated with reward magnitude and common areas in the striatum correlated with prediction errors. Taken together, the findings support the hypothesis that shared anatomical substrates are involved in the computation of both monetary and social rewards.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Theory of Mind: A Neural Prediction Problem (2013, neutral): “…either using social stimuli (e.g., smiling faces) as reward, or learning about reward based on observation or consideration of others’ experiences (Lin et al., 2012; Zhu et al., 2012; Zaki and Mitchell, 2011; Poore et al., 2012; Jones et al., 2011; Izuma et al., 2008; Chang and Sanfey, 2013; see…”
The Computation of Stimulus Values in Simple Choice (2014, background): “Several studies have also shown NEUROECONOMICS that the vmPFC correlates with SVs during social decision making (Hare et al., 2010; Lin et al., 2012).”
Beyond simple models of self-control to circuit-based accounts of adolescent behavior. (2015, background): “…shows overlapping neural circuitry for social (praise, gain in reputation, positive affect) and nonsocial (juice, money) rewards (Bhanji & Delgado 2013, Fareri et al. 2012, Izuma et al. 2008, Jones et al. 2011, Lin et al. 2012, Meshi et al. 2013, Rademacher et al. 2010, van den Bos et al. 2007).”
Behavioral and neural properties of social reinforcement learning (2011, background): “…et al., 2010) and human imaging studies with primary reinforcers such as juice (McClure et al., 2003; O’Doherty et al., 2003; D’Ardenne et al., 2008) and secondary reinforcers such as money or attractive or smiling faces (Bray and O’Doherty, 2007; Valentin and O’Doherty, 2009; Lin et al., 2011).”