Sharing Goals with Human and Non-Human Agents: A Neurofunctional Investigation

Poster Session B - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Margherita Adelaide Musco¹ (m.musco3@campus.unimib.it), Lucia Maria Sacheli¹, Eraldo Paulesu¹; ¹University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

Motor interactions imply relating to another human (social dimension) whose contribution is needed to achieve a goal that could otherwise not be achieved (goal-related dimension). We explored whether these two dimensions characterizing collaborative exchanges modulate the neuro-cognitive processes recruited by agents when an interaction partner makes a mistake. In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, 24 young and healthy participants played sequences of notes in turn-taking with a co-actor that was believed to be either another participant or the computer (Human vs. Non-Human co-actor, social manipulation) during an Interactive and Non-Interactive context. While in the Non-Interactive context the partner’s performance was irrelevant, in the former the participant and the partner together accumulated points when performing the correct sequence (manipulation of the goal-related dimension). In 50% of the trials, the co-actor made a mistake. The partner’s accuracy (Correct action vs. Error) modulated the neural activity in areas responsible for action monitoring (including fronto-parietal and fronto-opercular regions) in both contexts and with both co-actors. However, while neural activity in the posterior medial frontal cortex and right frontal operculum (responsible for own action monitoring) predicted the agents’ post-error behavioral adaptations in the Interactive context, in the Non-Interactive context they correlated with the parietal activations responsible for exogenous attention. Moreover, only in the Interactive context, the activation patterns of error-related neural activity enabled to decode the partner’s (human vs. non-human) nature. Altogether, these data suggest that the social and goal-related dimensions of joint actions concur in determining neurocognitive responses to a partner’s behavior.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Other