Novelty-seeking and directed exploration scale with dissociable social network outcomes and brain systems in older adults

Authors

Valtierra, C., Hogeveen, J., Mace, G., Moreno, S., Ostrand, A., Griffith, S., Auil, M. J., McConnell, P., Chen, J. C. C., Mitchell, J., Turner, G. R., Spreng, N., Gazzaley, A., Pasquini, L.

Abstract

Social isolation and loneliness are major determinants of well-being in older adults. Shrinking social networks and age-related shifts in social behavior and decision-making may increase vulnerability to loneliness. These changes in social decision-making strategies can be conceptualized within an exploration-exploitation tradeoff framework, in which social options with known outcomes are prioritized over uncertain ones. Yet, no study has characterized how complementary decision-making strategies, undirected novelty seeking and goal-directed exploration, relate to social network constructs or are supported by distinct neural systems. These strategies capture distinct forms of decision-making: undirected novelty seeking is driven by the intrinsic salience of novel options independent of expected informational gain, whereas goal-directed exploration involves deliberately sampling uncertain options to reduce uncertainty and optimize future choices. Here, we used fMRI and a novel social bandit reinforcement task to identify dissociable social constructs and brain systems linked to undirected novelty seeking and goal-directed exploration in older adults. Undirected novelty seeking was associated with social network size and with activity of temporoparietal and mid-cingulate brain areas. Goal-directed exploration predicted subjective feelings of social connectedness and was associated with activity of anterior cingulate and prefrontal brain areas. Crucially, choice probabilities from a non-social version of the three-arm bandit task were not associated with social decision-making nor with social constructs. Our findings suggest that, in later life, dissociable social decision-making strategies, when faced with unknown options, rely on distinct neural systems supporting social network size as well as subjective feelings of social connectedness.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 24 Sep 2026.

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