1. FMRIB Centre, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
2. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK
3. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence to: Timothy E. J. Behrens^1,2,3 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to T.E.J.B. (Email: behrens@fmrib.ox.ac.uk).

Abstract

Our decisions are guided by information learnt from our environment. This information may come via personal experiences of reward, but also from the behaviour of social partners^{1, 2}. Social learning is widely held to be distinct from other forms of learning in its mechanism and neural implementation; it is often assumed to compete with simpler mechanisms, such as reward-based associative learning, to drive behaviour³. Recently, neural signals have been observed during social exchange reminiscent of signals seen in studies of associative learning⁴. Here we demonstrate that social information may be acquired using the same associative processes assumed to underlie reward-based learning. We find that key computational variables for learning in the social and reward domains are processed in a similar fashion, but in parallel neural processing streams. Two neighbouring divisions of the anterior cingulate cortex were central to learning about social and reward-based information, and for determining the extent to which each source of information guides behaviour. When making a decision, however, the information learnt using these parallel streams was combined within ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest that human social valuation can be realized by means of the same associative processes previously established for learning other, simpler, features of the environment.

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