Functional connectivity with ventromedial prefrontal cortex reflects subjective value for social rewards

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Neuroscience
• Decision Neuroscience

Background:

• The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is known to encode subjective value for various rewards.
• However, the integration of multiple reward factors, potentially processed outside the VMPFC, is crucial for comprehensive valuation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if interactions between the posterior VMPFC and connected brain regions predict subjective value.
• To explore the neural basis of subjective value construction for social rewards.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to observe brain activity while participants rated the attractiveness of unfamiliar faces.
• A post-scan task quantified individual subjective value for attractiveness by measuring willingness to pay.
• Connectivity analyses examined the relationship between VMPFC network activity and individual valuation differences.

Main Results:

• Activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior VMPFC, and caudate nucleus increased with higher attractiveness ratings.
• Connectivity between the posterior VMPFC and social information processing regions (TPJ, middle temporal gyrus) correlated with individual differences in subjective value.
• These interconnected regions explained unique variance in subjective value beyond VMPFC-centric measures.

Conclusions:

• The posterior VMPFC interacts with other brain regions during the valuation of social rewards.
• Regions involved in social information processing contribute unique information to the construction of subjective value.
• These findings highlight the distributed neural network underlying social reward valuation.