Behavioral and Neural Properties of Social Reinforcement Learning

Jones, Rebecca M.; Somerville, Leah H.; Li, Jian; Ruberry, Erika J.; Libby, Victoria; Glover, Gary H.; Voss, Henning U.; Ballon, Douglas; Casey, B. J.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.2972-11.2011

Cited by 153 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…These studies consistently show that neural activity in the ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), core regions of the brain's reward system that also respond to food and money (12, 13), increases in response to faces that are perceived as attractive. Other studies show that these brain regions also respond to another person's prosocial behavior (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). Although this research documents the role of the brain's reward system in interpersonal attraction, it does not explain why social encounters often result in relational effects in interpersonal attraction (21) such that one individual is particularly attracted to one person whereas another individual is more attracted to another person.…”

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confidence: 71%

A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction

Anders

Jong

Beck

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Being able to comprehend another person's intentions and emotions is essential for successful social interaction. However, it is currently unknown whether the human brain possesses a neural mechanism that attracts people to others whose mental states they can easily understand. Here we show that the degree to which a person feels attracted to another person can change while they observe the other's affective behavior, and that these changes depend on the observer's confidence in having correctly understood the other's affective state. At the neural level, changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the reward system of the observer's brain. Importantly, these effects were specific to individual observertarget pairs and could not be explained by a target's general attractiveness or expressivity. Furthermore, using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we found that neural activity in the reward system of the observer's brain varied as a function of how well the target's affective behavior matched the observer's neural representation of the underlying affective state: The greater the match, the larger the brain's intrinsic reward signal. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that reward-related neural activity during social encounters signals how well an individual's "neural vocabulary" is suited to infer another person's affective state, and that this intrinsic reward might be a source of changes in interpersonal attraction.affective communication | confidence | intrinsic reward | multivoxel pattern analysis | human social relations F inding the "right" cooperation partner is an important task for individuals living in complex environments that require social interaction and cooperation. To accomplish a common goal, interaction partners must understand and continuously update information about their partner's current intentions, motivation, and affect, anticipate the other's behavior, and adapt their own behavior accordingly. From a sociobiological point of view, one thus might expect that evolution has favored a neural mechanism that permits individuals to select other individuals as their cooperation partners whose behavior and communication signals they can easily decode. However, the neural mechanisms that control human interpersonal attraction and the selection of cooperation partners are not wellunderstood.Several influential theories in social psychology have stressed the role of reward in interpersonal attraction (1, 2). The idea is that if a social encounter with another person is rewarding, then the reward will become associated with the other person, resulting in interpersonal attraction (2-4). Until recently, neuroscientific research into interpersonal attraction has focused mainly on determining the neural mechanism underlying the evaluation of others based on the physical attractiveness of their faces (e.g., 5-11). These studies consistently show that neural activity in the ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), core regions of the brain's reward syste...

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confidence: 71%

A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction

Anders

Jong

Beck

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…For participants with more advanced pubertal maturation, the experience of having their picture shown to the other girls as "winner" of the round appears to have been reinforcing enough that this behavior persisted despite the feedback that funds were decreasing. Learning may have been shaped by this motivational process of social reinforcement, rather than by cognitive processes, for those who found it especially rewarding (Jones et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social status strategy in early adolescent girls: Testosterone and value-based decision making

Cardoos

Suleiman

Johnson

et al. 2017

Psychoneuroendocrinology

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a b s t r a c tThere has been strong interest, spanning several disciplines, in understanding adolescence as a developmental period of increased risk-taking behavior. Our goals focus on one line of investigation within this larger developmental risk framework. Specifically, we examined levels of pubertal hormones in girls in relation to their willingness to take greater financial risks to gain social status. To this end, we tested the hypothesis that higher levels of testosterone during the ages of pubertal maturation are associated with a greater willingness to sacrifice money for social admiration. Sixty-three girls ages 10-14 (M age = 12.74) participated in laboratory measures and completed at-home saliva sample collection. The Pubertal Development Scale (PDS) and basal hormone levels (testosterone, estradiol, DHEA) measured pubertal maturation. We made use of a developmentally appropriate version of an Auction Task in which adolescents could take financial risks in order to gain socially motivated outcomes (social status). PDS and testosterone were each associated with overall levels of financial risk taking over the course of the Auction Task. In hierarchical models, PDS and testosterone were predictors of the slope of overbidding over the course of the task. Results provide evidence for the role of testosterone and pubertal maturation in girls' motivations to engage in costly decision making in order to gain social status. Findings contribute to our understanding of the developmental underpinnings of some interesting aspects of adolescent risk behavior.

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“…The latter interpretation is contradicted by studies of non-financial social rewards: faces with positive affect 22 or symbolic gestures 55 that are fully unrelated to monetary outcomes elicit behavioural effects and prediction-error signalling in the ventral striatum similar to those seen for monetary rewards. Thus, stimuli and actions that are uniquely encountered in social interactions can reinforce behaviour through neural mechanisms that are similar to those underlying non-social reinforcement with money (FIG.…”

Section: Learning About Othersmentioning

confidence: 94%

The neurobiology of rewards and values in social decision making

2014

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Of all the decisions in your life, which were the most important? Chances are high that many of them had a social component, be it when deciding about others (for example, whether to marry someone), for others (for example, which school to send your child to) or jointly with others (for example, whether to buy a house with your partner). Pathological changes specifically in the social aspects of decision making are pervasive in many psychiatric 1 and neurological 2 disorders and can have devastating consequences for individual and collective welfare. A good understanding of the neural basis of social decision making is thus an important aim of scientists in many disciplines, from basic neuroscience to medicine, psychology and economics.The neural mechanisms underlying social and nonsocial types of choices have traditionally been examined from different theoretical angles. In studies of non-social choices (for example, purchasing decisions), researchers have often focused on neural value computations associated with the rewarding properties of the choice options 3,4 . On the basis of this research, several brain structures have been proposed as elements of a brain valuation system (BOX 1). The neural value signals in these structures are thought to represent a 'common currency' for assessing the motivational relevance of all possible stimuli or actions, which is essential for guiding decision making across varying contexts 5,6 . By contrast, researchers studying social decisions have traditionally paid less attention to motivational processes, such as reward and value coding; instead, they have focused on identifying neurocognitive processes that may have uniquely evolved to guide social behaviour 7 . This emphasis on 'social-specific cognition' has identified, for example, that different visual areas seem to be functionally specialized for the perception of faces or bodies 8 and that the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) may be specifically involved in representing the intentions, emotions or actions of other people [9][10][11] . The idea of 'social-specific cognition' thus implies that the control of social and non-social behaviour should fundamentally differ in terms of neural architecture and information processing demands 12 . However, this view is challenged by recent findings that social decisions may also draw on value-related brain processes that strongly resemble those seen during non-social decisions. This apparent overlap in neural representations of motivational relevance for social and non-social choices is often taken to implicitly extend the 'common currency' idea to decisions based on social factors. This proposalthat choices in both social and non-social situations are steered by identical neural value computations -therefore questions whether the motivational control of social behaviour requires dedicated neural processes.In this Review, we propose a framework for studying the possible neurobiological links in the motivational control of social...

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Behavioral and Neural Properties of Social Reinforcement Learning

Cited by 153 publications

References 50 publications

A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction

A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction

Social status strategy in early adolescent girls: Testosterone and value-based decision making

The neurobiology of rewards and values in social decision making

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