A brain network supporting social influences in human decision-making

Humans learn from their own trial-and-error experience and from observing others. However, it remains unanswered how brain circuits compute expected values when direct learning and social learning coexist in an uncertain environment. Using a multi-player reward learning paradigm with 185 participants (39 being scanned) in real-time, we observed that individuals succumbed to the group when confronted with dissenting information, but increased their confidence when observing confirming information. Leveraging computational modeling and fMRI we tracked direct valuation through experience and vicarious valuation through observation, and their dissociable, but interacting neural representations in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, respectively. Their functional coupling with the right temporoparietal junction representing instantaneous social information instantiated a hitherto uncharacterized social prediction error, rather than a reward prediction error, in the putamen. These findings suggest that an integrated network involving the brains reward hub and social hub supports social influence in human decision-making.