The role of the posterior temporal and medial prefrontal cortices in mediating learning from romantic interest and rejection
Open accessAbstract
Romantic interest or rejection can be powerful incentives not merely for their emotional impact, but for their potential to transform, in a single interaction, what we think we know about another person--or ourselves. Little is known, though, about how the brain computes expectations for, and learns from, real-world romantic signals. In a novel "speed-dating" paradigm, we had participants meet potential romantic partners in a series of 5-min "dates," and decide whether they would be interested in seeing each partner again. Afterward, participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they were told, for the first time, whether that partner was interested in them or rejected them. Expressions of interest and rejection activated regions previously associated with "mentalizing," including the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and rostromedial prefrontal cortex (RMPFC); while pSTS responded to differences from the participant's own decision, RMPFC responded to prediction errors from a reinforcement-learning model of personal desirability. Responses in affective regions were also highly sensitive to participants' expectations. Far from being inscrutable, then, responses to romantic expressions seem to involve a quantitative learning process, rooted in distinct sources of expectations, and encoded in neural networks that process both affective value and social beliefs.
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Upon learning of one's own desirability, the posterior temporal sulcus, medial prefrontal cortex, anterior insular cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex are activated; following rejection from a potential romantic interest, the anterior insular cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex are also recruited.
“Upon learning of one’s own desirability, the posterior temporal sulcus, mPFC, aIC, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) are activated; however, following rejection from a potential romantic interest, the aIC and dACC are also recruited [106,107,108].”
From The Neurobiology of Love and Pair Bonding from Human and Animal Perspectives (2023) · cites this paper as [106]
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- Authors
- Cooper, J. C., Dunne, S., Furey, T., & O'Doherty, J. P.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Trinity College (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Cooper, Jeffrey C.
- ORCID
- Dunne, Simon
- Venue
- Cerebral Cortex
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2013-04-18
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 2502-2511
- ISSN
- 1047-3211 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2199
- PMC
- PMC3820469
- OpenAlex
- W2142835174
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 1.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Cerebral Cortex (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Wellcome Trust (WT087388AIA, 087388)
- Irish Research Council
- National Institutes of Health (5t32mh020006-19)
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH020006), P50MH094258)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Keywords
- romantic interest, romantic rejection, social learning, posterior superior temporal sulcus, mentalization, prediction error, reinforcement learning, social expectations, speed dating
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Brain Mapping, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Learning, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Models, Psychological, Sexual Behavior, Social Perception, Temporal Lobe, Prefrontal Cortex, Feedback, Psychological, Young Adult, Theory of Mind
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