Social Reward

Reward is the most important determinant of animal behavior, and social animals are often influenced by a variety of socially rewarding stimuli. Here, I explain recent neuroscience studies investigating the neural basis of socially rewarding stimuli, including faces, social approval from other people, and so on. Studies consistently report that social rewards are processed in the brain's reward system, which includes the striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and midbrain