Love is analogous to money in human brain: coordinate-based and functional connectivity meta-analyses of social and monetary reward anticipation (VTA, ventral striatum, anterior insula, and SMA)

Love is analogous to money in human brain: coordinate-based and functional connectivity meta-analyses of social and monetary reward anticipation. Ruolei Gu et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.02.017

Highlights
•    We focus on the anticipation stage of monetary/social incentive delay task.
•    Neural signatures of social and monetary reward anticipation are compared.
•    Social and monetary reward anticipation engaged a common neural circuit.
•    The circuit includes VTA, ventral striatum, anterior insula, and SMA.
•    It mediates positive value, motivational relevance, and action preparation.

Abstract: Both social and material rewards play a crucial role in daily life and function as strong incentives for various goal-directed behaviors. However, it remains unclear whether the incentive effects of social and material reward are supported by common or distinct neural circuits. Here, we have addressed this issue by quantitatively synthesizing and comparing neural signatures underlying social (21 contrasts, 207 foci, 696 subjects) and monetary (94 contrasts, 1083 foci, 2060 subjects) reward anticipation. We demonstrated that social and monetary reward anticipation engaged a common neural circuit consisting of the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum, anterior insula, and supplementary motor area, which are intensively connected during both task and resting states. Functional decoding findings indicate that this generic neural pathway mediates positive value, motivational relevance, and action preparation during reward anticipation, which together motivate individuals to prepare well for the response to the upcoming target. Our findings support the common neural currency hypothesis by providing the first meta-analytic evidence to quantitatively show the common involvement of brain regions in both social and material reward anticipation.