Seo and colleagues used RLT in combination with a competitive interactive game to identify cells in macaque medial frontal cortex that fire specifically when monkeys deviate from reinforced choice patterns, which is desirable in their paradigm because it enables to monkey to outplay the opponent (Seo et al., 2014). Often, the key interest of these types of studies of social interaction lies in the human or animal’s ability for strategic reasoning given the observable behaviour of another player (Devaine et al., 2014). Albeit of considerable interest in itself, this focus on the strategic elements of social interactions cannot explain all aspects of real-life interactions (Schilbach et al., 2013). Specifically, there has been a significant and noteworthy absence of research on how we update our own thoughts and feelings about ourselves based on our interactions with others; accurately updating our beliefs based on interactions with others is critical for the formation of processes such as self-esteem and self-monitoring. Moreover, there has been a relative absence of studies of the role of ventral, compared to dorsal ACC and adjacent mPFC areas in social decision-making.
