Neural signatures of emotional intent and inference align during social consensus

Marianne C. Reddan (), Desmond C. Ong, Tor D. Wager, Sonny Mattek, Isabella Kahhale and Jamil Zaki ()
Additional contact information
Marianne C. Reddan: Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Desmond C. Ong: University of Texas at Austin
Tor D. Wager: Dartmouth College
Sonny Mattek: Stanford University
Isabella Kahhale: University of Pittsburgh
Jamil Zaki: Stanford University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Humans effortlessly transform dynamic social signals into inferences about other people’s internal states. Here we investigate the neural basis of this process by collecting fMRI data from 100 participants as they rate the emotional intensity of people (targets) describing significant life events. Targets provide self-ratings on the same scale. We then train and validate two unique multivariate models of observer brain activity. The first predicts the target’s self-ratings (i.e., intent), and the second predicts observer inferences. Correspondence between the intent and inference models’ predictions on novel test data increases when observers are more empathically accurate. However, even when observers make inaccurate inferences, the target’s intent can still be predicted from observer brain activity. These findings suggest that an observer’s brain contains latent representations of other people’s socioemotional intensity, and that fMRI models of intent and inference can be combined to predict empathic accuracy.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59931-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59931-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59931-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().