Love is analogous to money in human brain: Coordinate-based and functional connectivity meta-analyses of social and monetary reward anticipation

Abstract

Both social and material rewards play a crucial role in daily life and function as strong incentives for various goal-directed behaviors. However, it remains unclear whether the incentive effects of social and material reward are supported by common or distinct neural circuits. Here, we have addressed this issue by quantitatively synthesizing and comparing neural signatures underlying social (21 contrasts, 207 foci, 696 subjects) and monetary (94 contrasts, 1083 foci, 2060 subjects) reward anticipation. We demonstrated that social and monetary reward anticipation engaged a common neural circuit consisting of the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum, anterior insula, and supplementary motor area, which are intensively connected during both task and resting states. Functional decoding findings indicate that this generic neural pathway mediates positive value, motivational relevance, and action preparation during reward anticipation, which together motivate individuals to prepare well for the response to the upcoming target. Our findings support the *

Mapping social reward and punishment processing in the human brain: A voxel-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging findings using the Social Incentive Delay task

“…Using a voxel-based meta-analytic method, we identified an extensive network of brain areas involved in the anticipation of social rewards. Our results consolidate findings from a previous coordinate-based meta-analysis (ALE) regarding the involvement of the basal ganglia, the midbrain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the supplementary motor area, the anterior insula and the occipital gyrus (Gu et al, 2019). However, thanks to the enhanced sensitivity of the AES-SDM meta-analytic method that we used, our results extend this network by including frontal, temporal, parietal and cerebellar regions that were not captured in the previous coordinatebased meta-analysis.…”

“…These brain regions had not been previously identified in individual studies but have been suggested to participate in the brain processing of subjective value (Acikalin et al, 2017). In a similar previous AES-SDM meta-analysis of fMRI data from the MID task, the authors also identified a network of brain regions (largely overlapping with the brain region we identified here) showing decreases in the BOLD signal during the anticipation of monetary incentives (Wilson et al, 2018) that had not been identified in previous coordinate-based meta-analyses (Gu et al, 2019;Oldham et al, 2018b). Hence, our results neatly illustrate some of the advantages of the AES-SDM meta-analytic approach, including its increased sensitivity compared to the frequently underpowered single studies or coordinate-based meta-analyses .…”

“…Building on findings from the MID task, some studies have inspected if the same neural circuits that underpin the processing of monetary incentives also underpin the processing of social incentives. Studies have investigated the neural underpinnings of the anticipation and receipt of social rewards/punishments using a variant of the MID task known as the Social or Affective Incentive Delay task -henceforth referred to as SID task (for an overview see (Gu et al, 2019). The SID task shares a similar structure as the MID task, but uses social stimuli that are inherently reinforcing or punishing (i.e.…”

“…Fewer studies have used the SID task than those using the MID task though. Individually, studies using the SID task have started to delineate the brain regions involved in the processing of social rewards/punishments (Gu et al, 2019). On the one hand, there is evidence that the processing of social incentives frequently evokes the activity of generic brain regions involved in reward prediction and value encoding, such as the striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex (Barman et al, 2015b;Rademacher et al, 2014;Spreckelmeyer et al, 2009).…”

“…To date, there has been only one attempt to quantitatively summarize neuroimaging findings from the SID task (Gu et al, 2019). This meta-analysis focused specifically on the anticipation social rewards (it did not examine the receipt phase of social rewards, or the processing of social punishment at all).…”