Examining the value of body gestures in social reward contexts

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  • Elin Williams
    University of Reading
  • Laura Bilbao-Broch
    University of Science and Technology
  • Paul Downing
  • Emily Cross
    University of Glasgow
Brain regions associated with the processing of tangible rewards (such as money, food, or sex) are also involved in anticipating social rewards and avoiding social punishment. To date, studies investigating the neural underpin- nings of social reward have presented feedback via static or dynamic displays of faces to participants. However, research demonstrates that participants find another type of social stimulus, namely, biological motion, reward- ing as well, and exert effort to engage with this type of stimulus. Here we examine whether feedback presented via body gestures in the absence of facial cues also acts as a rewarding stimulus and recruits reward-related brain regions. To achieve this, we investigated the neural underpinnings of anticipating social reward and avoiding social disapproval presented via gestures alone, using a social incentive delay task. As predicted, the anticipation of social reward and avoidance of social disapproval engaged reward-related brain regions, including the nucleus accumbens, in a manner similar to previous studies’ reports of feedback presented via faces and money. This study provides the first evidence that human body motion alone engages brain regions associated with reward process- ing in a similar manner to other social (i.e. faces) and non-social (i.e. money) rewards. The findings advance our understanding of social motivation in human perception and behavior.
Original languageEnglish
Article number117276
JournalNeuroimage
Volume222
Early online date17 Aug 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Nov 2020

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