Neural correlates underlying social-cue induced value change

As social beings, human behavior and cognition are fundamentally shaped by information provided by peers, making human subjective value for rewards prone to be manipulated by perceived social information. Even subtle non-verbal social information, such as other’s eye gazes, can influence value assignment, such as food value. In this study, we investigate the neural underpinnings of how gaze-cues modify participants’ food value by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the gaze-cueing task, food items were repeatedly presented either while others looked at them or while they were ignored by others. We determined participants’ food values by assessing their willingness to pay (WTP) before and after a standard gaze-cueing training. Results revealed that participants were willing to pay significantly more for food items that were attended by others compared to the unattended food items. Neural data showed that differences in subjective values between the two conditions were accompanied by enhanced activity in the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and caudate after food items were attended. Furthermore, the functional connectivity between the caudate and the angular gyrus precisely predicted the individual differences in the preference shift. Our results unveil the key neural mechanism underlying the influence of social cues on subjective value of food and highlight the crucial role of social context in shaping subjective value for food rewards in human.