Events

Authors:

• Chen-Ying HUANG
  National Taiwan University

• Wen-Jui KUO
  National Yang-Ming University

• Yu-Ping CHEN
  National Taiwan University

• Tomas SJÖSTRÖM
  Rutgers University

Dominance solvable games have a well-defined game theoretic "solution" which can be found by a step-by-step mathematical procedure. In contrast, pure coordination games have no such mathematical solution but must be solved by intuition alone. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we scanned 21 participants when they played both kinds of games. We found that insula and anterior cingulate cortex were more active for coordination games than for dominance solvable games. The middle frontal gyrus, the inferior parietal lobule and precuneus showed the opposite pattern. This supports the hypothesis that the participants had access to two quite different mental processes for playing these two kinds of games. The dominance solvable games activated circuits used for deliberative step-by-step reasoning, while the coordination games activated a system for making intuitive decisions in social situations.