SynthesisNeuroImage2015
Common and distinct neural correlates of personal and vicarious reward: A quantitative meta-analysis.
Synthesis in NeuroImage, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 211 citations in OpenAlex.
- Economic value in the Brain: A meta-analysis of willingness-to-pay using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction.PloS one · 2023Pooled it
- Basal ganglia lateralization in different types of reward.Brain imaging and behavior · 2020Pooled it
- Spatial migration of human reward processing with functional development: Evidence from quantitative meta-analyses.Human brain mapping · 2020Pooled it
- Effects of compassion training on brain responses to suffering others.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Trial
- Neural representations of the value of helping the family during adolescence.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dynamic modeling in neurocognitive frameworks of childhood ADHD: a review of inhibitory control and reward systems.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- How helping others helps us: neural mechanisms linking prosocial behavior to psychological and physical wellbeing.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Review
- Social learning and exploration-exploitation dilemma in decision-making.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2026Review
- Prosocial decisions in naturalistic helping scenarios are predicted by cost-benefit tradeoffs and individual disposition.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Observational learning strategies impact the neural correlates of declarative memory formation.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Altered Reward Processing in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Insights From Active and Observational Learning.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Neural correlates of Bayesian social belief updating in the medial prefrontal cortex.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Taking an embodied avatar's perspective modulates the temporal dynamics of vicarious pain and pleasure: a virtual reality and EEG study.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Exercising self-control increases responsivity to hedonic and eudaimonic rewards.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Reward system atrophy relates to heightened feelings of physical closeness in Alzheimer's disease.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Neural correlates of vicarious reward processing and peer victimization experiences in late childhood.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- A reward self-bias leads to more optimal foraging for ourselves than others.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Human ventromedial prefrontal cortex is necessary for prosocial motivation.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Neural Reward Representations Enable Utilitarian Welfare Maximization.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Towards a Real-Life Understanding of the Altered Functional Behaviour of the Default Mode and Salience Network in Chronic Pain: Are People with Chronic Pain Overthinking the Meaning of Their Pain?Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Individuals experience reward not only when directly receiving positive outcomes (e.g., food or money), but also when observing others receive such outcomes. This latter phenomenon, known as vicarious reward, is a perennial topic of interest among psychologists and economists. More recently, neuroscientists have begun exploring the neuroanatomy underlying vicarious reward. Here we present a quantitative whole-brain meta-analysis of this emerging literature. We identified 25 functional neuroimaging studies that included contrasts between vicarious reward and a neutral control, and subjected these contrasts to an activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta-analysis. This analysis revealed a consistent pattern of activation across studies, spanning structures typically associated with the computation of value (especially ventromedial prefrontal cortex) and mentalizing (including dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus). We further quantitatively compared this activation pattern to activation foci from a previous meta-analysis of personal reward. Conjunction analyses yielded overlapping VMPFC activity in response to personal and vicarious reward. Contrast analyses identified preferential engagement of the nucleus accumbens in response to personal as compared to vicarious reward, and in mentalizing-related structures in response to vicarious as compared to personal reward. These data shed light on the common and unique components of the reward that individuals experience directly and through their social connections.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.