For example, during intertemporal choice, the activity of the posterior cingulate cortex reflects the subjective values of delayed reward (Kable and Glimcher, 2007). Moreover, activity in the posterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus is higher during intertemporal
choice than during a similar decision-making task involving uncertain outcomes without any delays (Luhmann et al., 2008; Ballard and Knutson, 2009). The functional coupling between the hippocampus and the anterior Veliparib in vivo cingulate cortex is also correlated with how much episodic future thinking affects the preference for delayed reward (Peters and Büchel, 2010). The most complex and challenging forms of decision making take place in a social context (Behrens et al., 2009; Seo and Lee, 2012). During social interactions, outcomes are jointly determined by the actions of multiple decision makers (or players). In game theory (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944), a set of strategies chosen by all players is referred to as a Nash equilibrium, if none of the players can benefit from changing their strategies unilaterally
(Nash, 1950). In such classical game theoretic analyses, it is assumed that players pursue only their self-interests and are not limited in their cognitive abilities. In practice, these assumptions are often violated, and choices made by humans tend to deviate from Nash equilibriums (Camerer, 2003). Nevertheless, when the same games are played repeatedly, strategies of decision makers tend to approach the equilibriums (Figure 3B). Accordingly, iterative games have click here been often used in laboratories as a test bed to
examine how humans and animals might improve their strategies during social interactions. The results from these studies L-NAME HCl have demonstrated that both humans and animals apply a combination of model-free and model-based reinforcement learning algorithms (Camerer and Ho, 1999; Camerer, 2003; Lee, 2008; Abe et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2012). Since the outcomes of social decision making depend on the choices of others, model-based reinforcement learning during social interactions requires accurate models of the strategies used by other decision makers. The ability to make inferences about the knowledge and beliefs of other decision-making agents is referred to as the theory of mind (Premack and Woodruff, 1978; Gallagher and Frith, 2003). Neural signals necessary for updating the models of other players have been identified in the brain areas implicated for the theory of mind, such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus (Hampton et al., 2008; Behrens et al., 2008). Interestingly, most cortical areas included in the default network are activated similarly during the tasks related to episodic or autobiographical memory, prospection, and theory of mind (Gusnard et al., 2001; Spreng et al.