Causal role of a neural system for separating and selecting multidimensional social cognitive information

Human hippocampus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex infer and update latent causes during social interaction

“…These observations suggest that dmPFC updated the ability estimate for the chosen character (UEA) as a function of the responsibility that participants had inferred the character to have had (LCI). This role of dmPFC is consistent with other studies that have shown that dmPFC learns and represents others’ abilities 15–17 . However, social learning in previous studies was investigated in situations where the cause of each outcome was unambiguous and observable and did not have to be inferred.…”

“…Notably, despite the ubiquity of LCI in social situations, the investigation of social cognition has been dominated by studies lacking a requirement for inference, even though learning has been extensively investigated 14 . Learning and representing others' abilities in these situations are supported by a network of brain areas including dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and precuneus [15][16][17][18] . Therefore, UEA related computations might be carried out by one or more of these areas instead of, or in conjunction with, hippocampus.…”

A frontopolar-temporal circuit determines the impact of social information in macaque decision making

“… 38 , 39 Others have suggested a more general role for this area in social cognition, 40 whereas a recent study has suggested that dmPFC is involved in separating the currently relevant social information from the currently irrelevant ones. 37 Our study shows that dmFPC in monkeys might play a similar role: separating reliable information from the unreliable. According to this view, dmFPC plays a general role in weighing information according to its relevance, regardless of whether the relevance is imposed by context.…”

“…Temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC)—the human homologs of mSTS and dmFPC, respectively—are prominent in many social tasks. 5 , 35 , 36 , 37 It has been suggested that dmPFC in humans may be important for inferring others’ mental state. 38 , 39 Others have suggested a more general role for this area in social cognition, 40 whereas a recent study has suggested that dmPFC is involved in separating the currently relevant social information from the currently irrelevant ones.…”

Brain structure correlates of social information use: an exploratory machine learning approach

“…For example, areas that have been implicated in subjective confidence and the exploration of additional information, including the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (De Martino et al, 2013 ; Lebreton et al, 2015 ), might be important in deciding if information provided by others would be of additional value. Furthermore, regions important for social cognition, including the temporo-parietal junction (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003 ; Rushworth et al, 2013 ) and the medial prefrontal cortex (Amodio and Frith, 2006 ; Hampton et al, 2008 ; Mahmoodi et al, 2023 ) might be involved in deciding whose information to use, whereas the orbitofrontal and dorsolateral prefrontal regions have been found to play a role in the integration of information (Krawczyk, 2002 ; Bowman et al, 2012 ; Filimon et al, 2013 ; Pedersen et al, 2015 ; Nogueira et al, 2017 ). However, functional MRI measures have mediocre to poor test-retest reliability, rendering them suboptimal for researching individual differences (Elliott et al, 2020 ).…”