Biology subjects

Fareri, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Fareri, D..

10 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Associations Between Neural Responses to Social Fairness and Financial Exploitation Vulnerability Vary With Age and Emotional Intelligence

Financial exploitation often arises in social contexts in which individuals must evaluate fairness, trust, and interpersonal information during financial decisions. We examined whether neural responses to fairness in social versus nonsocial contexts relate to financial exploitation vulnerability and whether these relationships vary with age, emotional intelligence, and affect. A total of 310 adults spanning ages 21-89 completed an fMRI Ultimatum Game in which they accepted or rejected offers from human and computer partners, along with measures of financial exploitation vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and affect. Participants were strongly sensitive to offer fairness, and individual differences in behavioral sensitivity to partner type were associated with social-relative anterior insula responses to unfairness. Greater baseline negative affect was associated with stronger anterior insula differentiation between social and nonsocial fairness. Financial exploitation vulnerability was associated with prefrontal responses to social-relative fairness in ways that depended on individual characteristics: age moderated its association with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activation, whereas emotional intelligence moderated its association with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation. Whole-brain connectivity analyses further showed that age moderated associations between emotional intelligence and executive control network connectivity with posterior cingulate and right temporoparietal regions. These findings suggest that vulnerability to financial exploitation is reflected in how social context is integrated with affective and individual characteristics across adulthood.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Striatal Social Reward Sensitivity Predicts Trust-Related Brain Responses Depending on Closeness and Depression

BackgroundDepression is associated with social dysfunction, but the mechanisms linking affective symptoms to disrupted close relationships remain poorly understood. One possibility is that depression alters how people experience rewards shared with close others and how they interpret partners actions. It remains unclear whether neural sensitivity to shared reward predicts social valuation during more complex interactions such as reciprocated trust. MethodsIn this preregistered fMRI study, participants completed a reward-sharing task and a Trust Game with a close friend, a stranger, and a computer. We measured striatal shared reward sensitivity (SRS; friend > computer) and tested whether it related to subsequent investment behavior and brain responses to trust reciprocation. Depressive symptoms and perceived closeness were assessed via self-report. ResultsIn a final sample of n = 123, participants reporting more depressive symptoms invested more in their friend than in the computer. Striatal SRS predicted temporoparietal junction responses to reciprocated trust, but this association depended jointly on social closeness and depression -- with depression reversing the expected pattern among individuals reporting closer relationships. Striatal SRS was also inversely associated with connectivity between the default mode network and cerebellum during reciprocity. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that closeness calibrates the striatal SRS link to regional activity and network-level responses during social exchange, while depression alters how striatal SRS relates to regional activity, potentially disrupting how individuals interpret and respond to close others.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Norm Violations Across Trust and Fairness Contexts

Trust and fairness sustain cooperation, but social neuroscience has largely studied violations of these social norms in isolation. We asked whether neural sensitivity to betrayal carries forward into the evaluation of unfairness in a separate social exchange. In 132 adults who completed fMRI during the Trust Game and Ultimatum Game, betrayal and unfairness both recruited overlapping voxels within left anterior insula. Yet, individual differences in regional activation were uncorrelated across tasks, arguing against a simple shared-response account. Instead, cross-task structure emerged in connectivity: stronger anterior insula responses to social versus nonsocial betrayal predicted weaker anterior insula-ventromedial prefrontal coupling during social versus nonsocial fairness evaluation. These findings suggest that betrayal and unfairness are linked less by identical regional responses than by how salience signals engage valuation circuitry across contexts. By bridging two canonical social exchange tasks within the same individuals, this study reveals a network-level architecture for generalizing sensitivity to interpersonal norm violations.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Older Adults Show Altered Network Connectivity during Fairness Decisions with Similar and Dissimilar Partners

Fairness-related decisions depend on both offer value and partner identity, yet how aging reshapes the network-level connectivity supporting these decisions across social contexts remains unknown. Younger (18-35) and older (65-80) adults underwent fMRI while responding to offers in an ultimatum game from ostensible partners similar or dissimilar in age. We modeled trial-by-trial choices by offer size, age group, and partner similarity, and examined whole-brain activation and task-dependent connectivity of the default mode (DMN) and executive control (ECN) networks. Participants accepted fairer offers more often, but behavioral sensitivity did not differ reliably by age group or partner similarity. Whole-brain activation analyses revealed no significant age-by-partner-similarity effects. Connectivity analyses, however, revealed opposing age-related patterns. Younger adults showed stronger fairness-modulated DMN-anterior cingulate connectivity for similar than for dissimilar partners, whereas older adults showed the reverse. Age also moderated the relationship between individual sensitivity to fairness norm violations and ECN-medial prefrontal connectivity: this association was negative in younger adults and positive in older adults. These findings suggest that decisions regarding fairness in younger and older adults may be supported by different patterns of large-scale network connectivity.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Trait reward sensitivity and behavioral motivation shape connectivity between the default mode network and the striatum during reward anticipation

Individuals vary substantially in their responses to rewarding events and their motivation to pursue rewards. While the ventral striatum (VS) plays a central role in reward anticipation, its functional connectivity with the default mode network (DMN)--critical for self-referential processing and value integration--potentially represents a key mechanism through which trait differences manifest in reward-related behavior. Here, we examine how trait reward sensitivity and state-level behavioral motivation relate to connectivity between the DMN and VS during reward anticipation. Forty-six participants completed the Monetary Incentive Delay task while undergoing fMRI, with trial types reflecting varying levels of reward and loss salience. Behavioral motivation, indexed by reaction time modulation across high-stakes and low-stakes trials, and self-report measures of anticipatory pleasure and reward sensitivity were assessed. Reward sensitivity interacted with anticipatory pleasure to predict behavioral motivation, such that individuals with higher anticipatory pleasure showed weaker behavioral motivation when reward sensitivity was greater, while those with lower anticipatory pleasure showed stonger behavioral motivation when reward sensitivity was greater. Critically, during high-stakes trials, reward sensitivity was associated with stronger DMN-VS connectivity in highly motivated individuals and weaker connectivity in less motivated participants. This moderation effect was consistent across gain and loss contexts, though with distinct directionality patterns. These findings provide novel insights into the neural correlates of individual differences in reward processing, demonstrating that trait reward sensitivity, anticipatory pleasure, and behavioral motivation are associated with distinct patterns of DMN-VS interactions during reward anticipation. These findings highlight the importance of considering motivational context when investigating reward-related neural mechanisms.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Social Context and Reward Sensitivity Enhance Corticostriatal Function during Experiences of Shared Rewards

Although prior research has demonstrated enhanced striatal response when sharing rewards with close social connections, less is known about how individual differences affect ventral striatal (VS) activation and connectivity when experiencing rewards within social contexts. Given that self-reported reward sensitivity and level of substance use have been associated with differences in VS activation, we set out to investigate whether these factors would be independently associated with enhancements to neural reward responses within social contexts. In this pre-registered study, participants (N=45) underwent fMRI while playing a card guessing game in which correct or incorrect guesses resulted in monetary gains and losses that were shared evenly with either a close friend, stranger (confederate), or non-human partner. Consistent with our prior work, we found increased VS activation when sharing rewards with a socially close peer as opposed to an out-of-network stranger. As self-reported reward sensitivity increased, the difference in VS response to rewards shared with friends and strangers decreased. We also found enhanced connectivity between the VS and temporoparietal junction when sharing rewards with close friends as opposed to strangers. Finally, exploratory analyses revealed that as reward sensitivity and sub-clinical substance use increase, the difference in VS connectivity with the right fusiform face area increases as a function of social context. These findings demonstrate that responsivity to the context of close friends may be tied to individual reward sensitivity or sub-clinical substance use habits; together these factors may inform predictions of risk for future mental health disorders.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Trait Reward Sensitivity Modulates Connectivity with the Temporoparietal Junction and Anterior Insula during Strategic Decision Making

Many decisions happen in social contexts such as negotiations, yet little is understood about how people balance fairness versus selfishness. Past investigations found that activation in brain areas involved in executive function and reward processing was associated with people offering less with no threat of rejection from their partner, compared to offering more when there was a threat of rejection. However, it remains unclear how trait reward sensitivity may modulate activation and connectivity patterns in these situations. To address this gap, we used task-based fMRI to examine the relation between reward sensitivity and the neural correlates of bargaining choices. Participants (N = 54) completed the Sensitivity to Punishment (SP)/Sensitivity to Reward (SR) Questionnaire and the Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System scales. Participants performed the Ultimatum and Dictator Games as proposers and exhibited strategic decisions by being fair when there was a threat of rejection, but being selfish when there was not a threat of rejection. We found that strategic decisions evoked activation in the Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) and the Anterior Insula (AI). Next, we found elevated IFG connectivity with the Temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during strategic decisions. Finally, we explored whether trait reward sensitivity modulated brain responses while making strategic decisions. We found that people who scored lower in reward sensitivity made less strategic choices when they exhibited higher AI-Angular Gyrus connectivity. Taken together, our results demonstrate how trait reward sensitivity modulates neural responses to strategic decisions, potentially underscoring the importance of this factor within social and decision neuroscience.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Substance use is related to differential activation and connectivity for social relative to monetary rewards

Aberrant levels of reward sensitivity have been linked to substance use disorder and are characterized by alterations in reward processing in the ventral striatum (VS). Less is known about how reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use relate to striatal function during social rewards (e.g., positive peer feedback). Testing this relation is critical for predicting risk for development of substance use disorder. In this pre-registered study, participants (N=44) underwent fMRI while completing well-matched tasks that assess neural response to reward in social and monetary domains. Contrary to our hypotheses, aberrant reward sensitivity blunted the relationship between substance use and striatal activation during receipt of rewards, regardless of domain. Moreover, exploratory whole-brain analyses showed unique relations between substance use and social rewards in temporoparietal junction. Psychophysiological interactions demonstrated that aberrant reward sensitivity is associated with increased connectivity between the VS and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during social rewards. Finally, we found that substance use was associated with decreased connectivity between the VS and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for social rewards, independent of reward sensitivity. These findings demonstrate nuanced relations between reward sensitivity and substance use, even among those without substance use disorder, and suggest altered reward-related engagement of cortico-VS responses as potential predictors of developing disordered behavior.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

A neural signature of reward

Using a neurometric approach, we identify and validate a neural signature of reward encoded in a distributed pattern of brain activity using data collected from 21 different studies (N = 2,691). Our model can discriminate between receiving rewards from punishments in completely independent data with 99% accuracy and includes weights located in regions containing a high density of D2/D3 receptors. The model exhibits strong generalizability across a range of tasks probing reward, and a high degree of specificity for reward compared to non-reward constructs. We demonstrate several applications of how this model can infer psychological states of positive affect in the absence of self report. The model is sensitive to changes in brain activity following causal manipulations of homeostatic states, can uncover individual preferences for loss-aversion, and can be used to identify positive affective experiences when watching a television show. Our results suggest that there is a shared neural signature of reward elicited across these different task contexts.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Towards a Neurometric-based Construct Validity of Trust

Trust is a nebulous construct central to successful cooperative exchanges and interpersonal relationships. In this study, we introduce a new approach to establishing construct validity of trust using "neurometrics". We develop a whole-brain multivariate pattern capable of classifying whether new participants will trust a relationship partner in the context of a cooperative interpersonal investment game (n=40) with 90% accuracy and find that it also generalizes to a variant of the same task collected in a different country with 82% accuracy (n=17). Moreover, we establish the convergent and discriminant validity by testing the pattern on thirteen separate datasets (n=1,427) and find that trust is reliably related to beliefs of safety, inversely related to negative affect, but unrelated to reward, cognitive control, social perception, theory of mind, and self-referential processing. Together these results provide support for the notion that the psychological experience of trust contains elements of beliefs of reciprocation and fear of betrayal aversion. Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence that trust is related to anticipated reward. This work demonstrates how "neurometrics" can be used to characterize the psychological processes associated with brain-based multivariate representations.

neuroscience↗