Construction of individual-specific social cognitive maps in the human brain
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Efficient social interactions depend on individual-specific social cognitive maps (SCMs) in the brain that represent other people’s social attributes and relationships. However, it remains unclear how these maps dynamically emerge and adapt based on social feedback during social interactions. Using functional MRI, we investigated how SCMs are constructed through learning while participants selected cooperative partners based on trial-by-trial feedback about candidates’ generosity and competence. We found that the candidates spread out in a subjective two-dimensional space defined by each participant’s preference-weighted values of generosity and competence during learning. The organization of this space was characterized by individual-specific preference orientations, ranging from an extreme preference for generosity to extreme preference for competence across participants. The medial and lateral prefrontal cortices supported SCM construction by tracking the relative distance between two potential partners and integrating feedback to update all partners’ locations in the spreading SCMs. After the learning phase, this frontal network, together with the temporoparietal junction and posterior cingulate/precuneus, was engaged in computation of the distance between two potential partners along the preference orientations of individual-specific SCMs to guide further social decision-making. Our findings decipher the neural mechanisms underlying dynamic construction of individual-specific SCMs as a basis for adaptive social navigation.
Source: Cell Reports
Authors: Tianyu Gao, Yiwen Deng, Shihui Han
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $5,620
OpenAlex ID: W7125387326