Topic: neural valuation signals

A range of behavioural phenomena such as food consumption, smoking, alcohol use, and altruism have been shown to ‘spread’ through human social networks. In particular, the spread of obesity in this manner has been identified as a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic. While specific neural reward systems such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) have been implicated in social information processing, it is not well understood how more complex social factors, such as the motivation behind a social partner’s decision, are integrated into neural valuation signals that underlie one’s own prefere