Age-Related Differences in Neural Responses to Social and Economic Decisions
Social relationships change across the lifespan as social networks narrow and motivational priorities shift to the present. Although these changes could impact our decisions regarding others, we know very little about age-related differences in social decision making, particularly neural mechanisms that contribute to such differences. To address this gap, one line of work in my lab is focused on age-related differences in neural responses to social and economic decisions. My talk will highlight three fMRI experiments that illustrate age-related differences in neural responses to trusting others, sharing rewards with others, and bargaining with others. Our ongoing/future work is examining how these age-related differences in neural responses to social reward and social decision making are linked to vulnerability to financial exploitation and cognitive decline. We envision expanding this work in the future by investigating how neural and behavioral responses to reward can be modulated by noninvasive brain stimulation and features of our local environment (e.g., community-level social cohesion). Overall, the ultimate goals of my research program are to delineate the mechanistic links between reward processing and behavior and to translate that knowledge into clinical interventions and improved public policies.