Dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions differentially impact social influence and temporal impulsivity

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has long been associated with economic and social decision-making in neuroimaging studies. Several debates question whether different ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) and dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC) regions have specific functions or whether there is a gradient supporting social and non-social cognition. Here, we tested an unusually large sample of rare participants with focal damage to mPFC (N = 33), individuals with lesions elsewhere (N = 17), and healthy controls (N = 71) (total N = 121). Participants completed a temporal discounting task to estimate their baseline discounting preferences before learning the preferences of two other people, one who was more temporally impulsive and one more patient. We used Bayesian computational models to estimate baseline discounting and susceptibility to social influence after learning others’ economic preferences. mPFC damage increased susceptibility to impulsive social influence compared to healthy controls and increased overall susceptibility to social influence compared to those with lesions elsewhere. Importantly, voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) of computational parameters showed that this heightened susceptibility to social influence was attributed specifically to damage to the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC, area 9). In contrast, lesions in the vmPFC (areas 13 and 25) and ventral striatum were associated with a preference for seeking more immediate rewards. We show that the dmPFC is causally implicated in susceptibility to social influence, with distinct ventral portions of mPFC involved in temporal discounting.