Jan Gläscher, Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf | A network supporting social influence in human decision-making

Abstract

Most decisions are made in a social context. From big decisions that shape our future (What do my family and friends think I should study in university?) to small daily decisions (Should I take the same lunch menu as the four co-worker before me?) our choices are affected the opinions and decisions of others. But how does the brain represent these social influences and how are they integrated into the decision-making process?

While there is a long tradition of research in this field the cognitive computations of these capacities and how they are implemented in the brain remain elusive. I will present results from studies from my lab investigating social influences on decision-making and how social information is integrated into the valuation process. Using a novel two-stage decision-making task, we are able to show how knowledge about the decisions of a group of other players influence our own decision to follow or dissent from the group. Computational modeling of these decision-making processes in combination with model-based fMRI unveils a functional network in the human brian that processes and integrate social influences when making choices.

Literature

• Ulf Toelch and Raymond J. Dolan (2015). Informational and Normative Influences in Conformity from a Neurocomputational Perspective. Trends in Cognitive Neuroscience (Link)