Neural Distinctions between Social and Nonsocial Reward Anticipation: An Examination of Activation Magnitude,...

Prevailing theories emphasize a "common neural currency" for social and nonsocial rewards, particularly during reward anticipation. However, direct comparisons of social and nonsocial reward anticipation remain limited, and clinical observations suggest that social reward processing can be selectively disrupted. The present fMRI study directly compared social and nonsocial reward anticipation to test differences in activation magnitude, functional connectivity, multivariate activity patterns, and modulation by individual differences in social reward motivation. Consistent with a "common neural currency" perspective, reward anticipation (collapsed across domains) was associated with increased activation in ventral striatum, anterior insula (AI), dorsal ACC (DACC), and SMA. Furthermore, social reward anticipation did not significantly shape functional connectivity among ventral striatum, AI, dorsal ACC, and SMA. However, local activation patterns in AI and SMA reliably discriminated the anticipation of social versus monetary reward. Additional decoding emerged in TPJ, STS, and OFC-regions previously inconsistently linked to social reward anticipation or more commonly associated with later stages of reward processing. Moreover, individual differences in Need to Belong predicted greater ACC (including ventromedial pFC) engagement during social reward anticipation. These findings support the perspective that social and nonsocial reward anticipation share some neural circuitry but are dissociable when local activation patterns and social motivational priorities are considered. The current study recasts our understanding of ways in which social reward anticipation may be distinct and raises an expanded role for brain regions typically associated with reward and/or social processing.