Understanding how humans make competitive decisions in complex environments is a key goal of decision neuroscience. Typical experimental paradigms constrain behavioral complexity (e.g. choices in discrete-play games), and thus, the underlying neural mechanisms of dynamic social interactions remain incompletely understood. Here, we collected fMRI data while humans played a competitive real-time video game against both human and computer opponents, and then, we used Bayesian non-parametric methods to link behavior to neural mechanisms. Two key cognitive processes characterized behavior in our task: (i) the coupling of one’s actions to another’s actions (i.e. opponent sensitivity) and (ii) the advantageous timing of a given strategic action. We found that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex displayed selective activation when the subject’s actions were highly sensitive to the opponent’s actions, whereas activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex increased proportionally to the advantageous timing of actions to defeat one’s opponent. Moreover, the temporoparietal junction tracked both of these behavioral quantities as well as opponent social identity, indicating a more general role in monitoring other social agents. These results suggest that brain regions that are frequently implicated in social cognition and value-based decision-making also contribute to the strategic tracking of the value of social actions in dynamic, multi-agent contexts.

中文翻译：

---

背外侧和背侧前额叶皮层追踪动态社会行为的不同属性。

了解人类如何在复杂环境中做出竞争性决策是决策神经科学的关键目标。典型的实验范式限制了行为的复杂性（例如离散游戏中的选择），因此，动态社交互动的潜在神经机制仍未得到完全理解。在这里，我们收集了功能磁共振成像数据，而人类则在与人类和计算机对手进行竞争性实时视频游戏的同时，还使用贝叶斯非参数方法将行为与神经机制联系起来。在我们的任务中，行为有两个关键的认知过程来表征：（i）一个人的行为与另一个人的行为（即对手的敏感性）的耦合，以及（ii）给定战略行动的有利时机。我们发现，当受试者的动作对对手的动作高度敏感时，背外侧前额叶皮层表现出选择性激活，而背部的前额叶皮层中的激活与击败对手的有利时机成比例增加。此外，颞顶交界处跟踪了这些行为量以及对手的社会身份，这表明在监测其他社会行为者方面起了更普遍的作用。这些结果表明，经常与社会认知和基于价值的决策有关的大脑区域也有助于在动态，多主体环境中战略性地追踪社会行为的价值。而背背前额叶皮层的激活与击败对手的有利时机成比例增加。此外，颞顶交界处跟踪了这些行为量以及对手的社会身份，这表明在监测其他社会行为者方面起了更普遍的作用。这些结果表明，经常与社会认知和基于价值的决策有关的大脑区域也有助于在动态，多主体环境中战略性地追踪社会行为的价值。而背背前额叶皮层的激活与击败对手的有利时机成比例增加。此外，颞顶交界处跟踪了这些行为量以及对手的社会身份，这表明在监测其他社会行为者方面起了更普遍的作用。这些结果表明，经常与社会认知和基于价值的决策有关的大脑区域也有助于在动态，多主体环境中战略性地追踪社会行为的价值。