SOCIAL LEARNING OF REWARD VALUE

这个项目调查了人类学习做出正确决定的最重要的方式之一：观察他人。虽然项目1调查了我们如何重视社会和非社会刺激(社会奖励处理)，但项目2调查了我们如何从他人那里学习关于奖励的知识(观察性学习)。当我们观看其他节目时，项目1中调查的决策值和经验值的计算是否也会发挥作用？如果是这样的话，他们会招募相同的大脑结构吗？四个具体目标系统地研究观察性学习背后的机制如何与从直接经验中学习背后更好地研究的机制形成对比。第一个目标集中在一种结构上，这种结构被认为是在驱动猴子学习、腹侧纹状体和记录的多巴胺能神经元中编码奖励预测错误的。第二个目标是将这些研究扩展到人类，使用来自颅内记录的单个单位和LFP数据，以及功能磁共振成像，并专注于多巴胺投射的目标结构：杏仁核和vmPFC。第三个目的是问这可能会对我们观察到的人产生什么影响：这个人是否有能力，他们是朋友还是陌生人；这个目标着眼于腹侧纹状体、杏仁核和腹内侧额前皮质的这种调制。第四个目的是探索在目标1和目标2下获得的功能磁共振数据与在核心3中评估的心理变量之间可能存在的个体差异。

This Project investigates one of the most important ways in which humans learn to make sound decisions: through observing other people. Whereas Project 1 investigated how we value social and nonsocial stimuli (social reward processing), this Project 2 investigates how we learn from other people about rewards (observational learning). Do the same computations of decision values and experienced values that were investigated under Project 1 also come into play when we watch others? If so, do they recruit the same brain structures? Four Specific Aims systematically investigate how the mechanisms behind observational learning might contrast with the much better studied mechanisms behind learning from direct experience. The first Aim focuses on a structure thought to encode reward prediction errors in dopaminergic neurons that drive learning, the ventral striatum, and recordings in monkeys. The second Aim extends these studies to humans, using single-unit and LFP data from intracranial recordings, together with fMRI and focuses on the target structures of dopamine projections: amygdala and vmPFC. The third Aim asks what difference it might make exactly who we are observing: whether the person is competent or not, whether they are a friend or a stranger; this Aim looks at such modulation in the ventral striatum, the amygdala, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The fourth Aim explores possible individual differences between the fMRI data obtained under Aims 1 and 2, and the psychological variables assessed under Core 3.