Working Together May Be Better: Activation of Reward Centers during a Cooperative Maze Task

Humans use theory of mind when predicting the thoughts and feelings and actions of others. There is accumulating evidence that cooperation with a computerized game correlates with a unique pattern of brain activation. To investigate the neural correlates of cooperation in real-time we conducted an fMRI hyperscanning study. We hypothesized that real-time cooperation to complete a maze task, using a blind-driving paradigm, would activate substrates implicated in theory of mind. We also hypothesized that cooperation would activate neural reward centers more than when participants completed the maze themselves. Of interest and in support of our hypothesis we found left caudate and putamen activation when participants worked together to complete the maze. This suggests that cooperation during task completion is inherently rewarding. This finding represents one of the first discoveries of a proximate neural mechanism for group based interactions in real-time, which indirectly supports the social brain hypothesis

Conditions and descriptions for comparison between completed and incomplete maze attempts.

<p>Conditions and descriptions for comparison between completed and incomplete maze attempts.</p

Pair versus Self-Drive Contrast.

<p>Activation coordinates and z-scores from <i>Pair versus Self-Drive</i> (top) and <i>Self-drive versus Pair</i> (bottom).</p

Collapse Self-Drive and Collapse Instruct. Overlay of Collapse Self-Drive (yellow) and Collapse Instruct (blue).

<p>Figures are in neurological orientation.</p

Activation in the caudate in the Pair versus Self-Drive Condition.

<p>Activation in the caudate in the Pair versus Self-Drive Condition.</p

Where Evolutionary Psychology Meets Cognitive Neuroscience: A Précis to Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience, the study of brain-behavior relationships, has long attempted to map the brain. The discipline is flourishing, with an increasing number of functional neuroimaging studies appearing in the scientific literature daily. Unlike biology and even psychology, the cognitive neurosciences have only recently begun to apply evolutionary meta-theory and methodological guidance. Approaching cognitive neuroscience from an evolutionary perspective allows scientists to apply biologically based theoretical guidance to their investigations and can be conducted in both humans and nonhuman animals. In fact, several investigations of this sort are underway in laboratories around the world. This paper and two new volumes ( Platek, Keenan, and Shackelford [Eds.], 2007 ; Platek and Shackelford [Eds.], under contract) represent the first formal attempts to document the burgeoning field of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience . Here, we briefly review the current state of the science of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience, the methods available to the evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist, and what we foresee as the future directions of the discipline