Trust-Based Decision-Making in the Health and Economic Domains Shows Similar Neural Correlates

Area of Science:

• Social Neuroscience
• Neuroeconomics
• Health Decision-Making

Background:

• Understanding dyadic decision-making is crucial in social neuroscience.
• Neuroeconomic studies often use economic game theory to explore decision-making.
• A key question is whether these neural correlates generalize to health contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate neural correlates of trust-based decision-making in patient-doctor interactions.
• To compare these neural patterns with those observed in classical neuroeconomic trust games.

Main Methods:

• A functional neuroimaging paradigm was employed.
• Participants (n=35) engaged in trust-based decision-making tasks.
• Tasks included patient-doctor interactions and investor-trustee economic games.

Main Results:

• The health-related decision-making task activated a similar neural network to the neuroeconomic task.
• Both investment attitudes (proactive vs. conservative) and feedback valence (positive vs. negative) showed comparable activation patterns across domains.
• Neural activation patterns were highly similar between health and economic contexts.

Conclusions:

• Trust-based decision-making exhibits shared neural correlates across economic and health domains.
• Findings suggest a generalized neural basis for trust in social interactions, irrespective of context.