Our ability to have an experience of another's pain is characteristic of empathy. Using functional
imaging, we assessed brain activity while volunteers experienced a painful stimulus and …

The neural processes underlying empathy are a subject of intense interest within the social
neurosciences 1 , 2 , 3 . However, very little is known about how brain empathic responses …

Decision making in an uncertain environment poses a conflict between the opposing
demands of gathering and exploiting information. In a classic illustration of this ‘exploration–…

Postencounter and circa-strike defensive contexts represent two adaptive responses to
potential and imminent danger. In the context of a predator, the postencounter reflects the initial …

Termination of a painful or unpleasant event can be rewarding. However, whether the brain
treats relief in a similar way as it treats natural reward is unclear, and the neural processes …

Animals, in particular humans, frequently punish other individuals who behave negatively or
uncooperatively towards them. In animals, this usually serves to protect the personal …

The ability to use environmental stimuli to predict impending harm is critical for survival.
Such predictions should be available as early as they are reliable. In pavlovian conditioning, …

Studies on human monetary prediction and decision making emphasize the role of the striatum
in encoding prediction errors for financial reward. However, less is known about how the …

Human choices are remarkably susceptible to the manner in which options are presented.
This so-called “framing effect” represents a striking violation of standard economic accounts of …

The mesostriatal dopamine system is prominently implicated in model-free reinforcement
learning, with fMRI BOLD signals in ventral striatum notably covarying with model-free …