Brain Signatures of Social Decision Making

Over the last decade much progress has been made in the study of social decision making. From economics and game theory, tasks have been defined to study the strategic interaction involving trust (the investment/trust game) and negotiation (the ultimatum game). From cognitive neuroscience and neuroeconomics, areas of the brain have been identified that allow individuals to share affective (empathy) or abstract mental (ToM) states. Activities in these areas of the brain are also found to be correlated with the strategies that people use in the economic games. Current research hopes to explain general principles of cortical computation that can explain the role of shared mental content in shaping the strategic decisions of interacting players.