Neurobiological Substrates of Social Behavior: A Neuroeconomic Framework

描述（由申请人提供）：目前的提案旨在研究健康成人社会学习的神经机制，作为理解精神疾病对社会功能影响的先驱。社会行为的改变往往是一系列惊人的神经精神疾病的最初症状。然而，虽然记忆、运动或情感功能的紊乱很容易被认为是更严重的潜在疾病的症状，但决策缺陷往往被忽视，尤其是在社交领域。此外，由于我们对潜在的神经机制及其与精神障碍的关系的了解有限，很少有行为测量或生物标志物来量化这种缺陷。我们通过目标导向的社会行为的计算模型的紧密集成来实现这一目标，并使用功能磁共振成像和局灶性病变患者的互补实验技术来测试预测结果。特别是，我们关注多巴胺的作用以及基底神经节和额叶皮质之间的相互作用，这两个区域对目标导向行为至关重要，并且已知会影响各种疾病。首先，我们将使用该模型，根据观察到的行为进行校准，以导出用于功能神经成像实验的逐个试验回归量。其次，模型本身的估计参数可用于在健康组和患病组之间进行比较，或找到患病组的亚型。最后，神经关联和行为估计可以结合起来，以发现新的疾病的大脑行为标记。通过这种方式，我们寻求在社会和非社会环境中提供目标导向行为的统一解释，这有可能导致基于可观察行为和神经生物学测量的维度分类精神障碍的新方法的发展。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The current proposal aims to study neural mechanisms of social learning in healthy adults as a precursor to understanding the impact of mental illnesses on social functioning. Changes in social behavior are often the first symptoms of a striking array of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, whereas disruptions in memory, motor, or emotional functioning are readily recognized as symptoms of more serious underlying conditions, decision-making deficits are often overlooked, particularly in the social domain. Furthermore, there exist few behavioral measures or biomarkers to quantify such deficits, due in part to our limited knowledge of the underlying neural mechanisms and their relation to mental disorders. We do so via a tight integration of computational modeling of goal-directed social behavior, and testing the predictions generated using complementary experimental techniques with both fMRI and focal lesion patients. In particular, we focus on the role of dopamine and interactions between the basal ganglia and frontal cortices, which are together critical for goal-directed behavior and known to be affected in a variety of disorders. First, we will use the model, calibrated on observed behavior, to derive trial-by-trial regressors for use in functional neuroimaging experiments. Second, the estimated parameters of the model themselves can be used to compare across health and diseased groups, or find subtypes of the diseased groups. Finally, the neural correlates and the behavioral estimates can be combined in order to find novel brain-behavior markers of diseases. In this way, we seek to provide a unifying account of goal-directed behavior in both social and non- social settings, which has the potential to lead to development of new ways of classifying mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiological measures.