Popal Haroon, Quarmley Megan, Smith David V, Jarcho Johanna, Olson Ingrid R
University of Maryland, Department of Psychology.
Temple University, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jun 5:2025.06.04.657253. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.04.657253.
Emerging evidence indicates the cerebellum contributes to cognitive functions including social reward processing, yet its specific role relative to established reward regions like the ventral striatum remains undefined. We hypothesized the cerebellum would respond equivalently to both positive and negative social rewards. This prediction is grounded in classical findings that the cerebellum operates via supervised learning mechanisms that rely on error signals rather than traditional reward-based reinforcement. Using fMRI, we examined adolescents and young adults during a social prediction task where participants forecasted others' opinions of them and received accuracy feedback. Findings reveal that both the ventral striatum and a subregion of the posterior cerebellum (Crus I and II) were sensitive to social rewards. However, unlike the ventral striatum, the cerebellum exhibited a more uniform response to feedback, treating correct predictions about being liked and disliked in a similar manner. No age-related differences were observed. These findings suggest the cerebellum processes social rewards distinctly from the ventral striatum, likely reflecting its computational emphasis on prediction errors rather than reward valence. This functional distinction advances our understanding of cerebellar contributions to social cognition and learning mechanisms.
新出现的证据表明，小脑对包括社会奖励处理在内的认知功能有贡献，但其相对于腹侧纹状体等既定奖励区域的具体作用仍不明确。我们假设小脑对积极和消极的社会奖励会有相同的反应。这一预测基于经典研究结果，即小脑通过依赖误差信号而非传统基于奖励的强化的监督学习机制运作。使用功能磁共振成像，我们在一项社会预测任务中对青少年和年轻人进行了检查，在该任务中参与者预测他人对自己的看法并收到准确性反馈。研究结果显示，腹侧纹状体和小脑后部的一个子区域（小脑 Crus I 和 II）对社会奖励敏感。然而，与腹侧纹状体不同，小脑对反馈表现出更一致的反应，以类似的方式对待关于被喜欢和被讨厌的正确预测。未观察到与年龄相关的差异。这些发现表明，小脑处理社会奖励的方式与腹侧纹状体明显不同，这可能反映了其对预测误差而非奖励效价的计算重点。这种功能差异推进了我们对小脑对社会认知和学习机制贡献的理解。
