CiNet Monthly Seminar
(On-line)

June 4, 2021
10:00-11:30
JST (GMT + 9:00)

Apply for participation from here.
When we cannot identify your affiliation etc., we may have to trun down your application.
You will be notified of participation details by e-mail on June 3.

“Neural mechanisms of information seeking in the service of social and non-social decision making”

Kenji Kobayashi
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania

Host : Masahiko Haruno

Abstract:
For adaptive decision making, it is critical to seek information based on instrumental benefit, i.e., the extent to which the information improves upcoming decisions, but underlying neural processes remain little understood. In this talk, I will present two fMRI studies that aim to uncover different aspects of instrumentality-driven information seeking in social and non-social settings.
First, using a variant of the “beads task,” I will show that people seek costly information adaptively based on the available decision evidence and reward structure, and that the underlying subjective value of information is represented and dynamically updated in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC).
Second, using economic games, I will show that people seek information about others’ traits (such as warmth and competence) and incorporate it into social decisions in a context-dependent manner, and that the representation of others’ traits in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is predictive of individual decisions.
These suggest that instrumentality-driven information seeking is supported by goal-directed, domain-general decision-making mechanisms.