Behavioral Social Neuroscience Seminar

Learning and predicting others' minds is critical for social cognition, but how it is done remains largely unknown. According to theories in social cognition, a simple conception is that humans simulate others' mental process by directly recruiting one's own process to model others' minds. Using human fMRI with model-based analyses based on frameworks of reinforcement learning and value-based decisions making, we found that simulation involves two hierarchical learning signals: a reward prediction error, generated by simulation of direct recruitment to model others' valuation and encoded in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and an action prediction error, based on simulation and observation of the other's choices to track others' variability and encoded in dorsolateral/dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These findings show that humans can learn to predict others' minds from simulation, using a scaffold of mentalizing signals.