Null results of oxytocin and vasopressin administration on mentalizing in a large fMRI sample: evidence from a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Although potential links between oxytocin (OT), vasopressin (AVP), and social cognition are well-grounded theoretically, most studies have included all male samples, and few have demonstrated consistent effects of either neuropeptide on mentalizing (i.e. understanding the mental states of others).

Social, self, (situational), and affective processes in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC): Causal, multivariate, and reverse inference evidence.

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) has been posited to serve a variety of social, affective, and cognitive functions. These conclusions have largely been driven by forward inference analyses (e.g.

Dissociable neural mechanisms track evidence accumulation for selection of attention versus action.

Decision-making is typically studied as a sequential process from the selection of what to attend (e.g., between possible tasks, stimuli, or stimulus attributes) to which actions to take based on the attended information.

Dorsal anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex have inverse roles in both foraging and economic choice.

Recent research has highlighted a distinction between sequential foraging choices and traditional economic choices between simultaneously presented options. This was partly motivated by observations in Kolling, Behrens, Mars, and Rushworth, Science, 336(6077), 95-98 (2012) (hereafter, KBMR) that these choice types are subserved by different circuits, with dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) preferentially involved in foraging and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) preferentially involved in economic choice. To support this account, KBMR used fMRI to scan human subjects making either a foraging choice (between exploiting a current offer or swapping for potentially better rewards) or an economic choice (between two reward-probability pairs).

Anterior cingulate engagement in a foraging context reflects choice difficulty, not foraging value.

Previous theories predict that human dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) should respond to decision difficulty. An alternative theory has been recently advanced that proposes that dACC evolved to represent the value of 'non-default', foraging behavior, calling into question its role in choice difficulty. However, this new theory does not take into account that choosing whether or not to pursue foraging-like behavior can also be more difficult than simply resorting to a default.