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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 6, 2025

The Collective Trust Game: An Online Group Adaptation of the Trust Game Based on the HoneyComb Paradigm

The Collective Trust Game: An Online Group Adaptation of the Trust Game Based on the HoneyComb Paradigm

Published on: October 20, 2022

How dopamine shapes trust beliefs.

Bianca A Schuster¹, Claus Lamm¹

¹Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria.

Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry

|November 25, 2024

Summary

Dopamine plays a crucial role in social learning, acting as a teaching signal rather than just a reward. This understanding may explain how antipsychotics help with conditions like persecutory delusions.

Keywords:

Bayesian inference Dopamine Paranoia Social learning Trust

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Last Updated: Jun 6, 2025

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Published on: October 20, 2022

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Published on: September 28, 2018

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Psychiatry
Social Cognition

Background:

Trust learning is vital for social cohesion but is impaired in conditions like schizophrenia and depression.
Persecutory delusions, common in these disorders, negatively impact health and well-being.
Dopamine's role in trust learning is implicated but not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To review computational and neurobiological findings on dopamine's role in social learning.
To explore dopamine's function beyond reward signaling in learning processes.
To examine how this understanding informs treatments for aberrant social learning.

Main Methods:

Comprehensive literature review of computational modeling and psychopharmacology studies.
Analysis of empirical findings on dopamine's function in social learning.
Examination of neurocomputational mechanisms related to social belief updating.

Main Results:

Evidence suggests dopamine acts as a teaching signal, guiding relevant information for learning.
This shifts the conceptualization of dopamine from a pure reward mechanism.
Potential neurocomputational pathways for antipsychotic efficacy in treating delusions are highlighted.

Conclusions:

Dopamine's role in social learning is complex, functioning as a relevance-based teaching signal.
Understanding this mechanism offers insights into treating disorders characterized by impaired social cognition.
Further research is needed to fully elucidate dopamine's neuromodulatory effects on social belief updating.