The role of neuroimaging in developmental social psychology

Abstract

Non-invasive neuroimaging techniques such as functional MRI enable us to relate psychological events to brain event locations. By linking the location-specific neuro-scientific and/or neurological information with psychological theory, this method can provide the constraints necessary to construct the psychological model. Given that the constructs are decomposable along the line of time (development); functional MRI in adult subject may provide useful information for constructing the social cognition development model. An approach to develop social cognition toward the prosocial behavior is presented. People are motivated not only by materialistic rewards but also by abstract social rewards such as good reputation. We first investigated whether acquiring a good reputation activates the same reward circuitry as monetary rewards. Subjects participated in fMRI experiments involving monetary and social rewards. The acquisition of one’s good reputation robustly activated reward-related brain areas, notably the striatum, and these overlapped with the areas activated by monetary rewards. This finding indicates that the experienced utilities of both social and monetary rewards are represented in the striatum. Secondly, to investigate how reputation influences an altruistic behavior such as making a donation, we investigated the activation of the striatum when individuals freely decided whether to donate to real charities or take the money for themselves in the presence or absence of observers. Behavioral evidence showed that the mere presence of observers increased donation rates, and neuroimaging results revealed that activation in the ventral striatum before the same choice (“donate” or “not donate”) was significantly modulated by the presence of observers. These findings highlight the importance of the striatum in representing both social and monetary rewards acting as a “decision utility” and add to the understanding of how the brain makes a choice using a “common neural currency” in social situations.