DIBS
Researchers Find Brain Center for Social Choices
July 05,
2012
Written by
Julie Rhodes, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences
Although
many areas of the human brain are devoted to social tasks like detecting
another person nearby, a new study has found that one small region carries
information only for decisions during social interactions. Specifically, the
area is active when we encounter a worthy opponent and decide whether to
deceive them.
A brain
imaging study conducted by researchers at the Duke Center for Interdisciplinary
Decision Science (D-CIDES) put human subjects through a functional MRI brain
scan while playing a simplified game of poker against a computer and human
opponents. Using computer algorithms to sort out what amount of information
each area of the brain was processing, the team found only one brain region —
the temporal-parietal junction, or TPJ —– carried information that was unique
to decisions against the human opponent.
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