Raymond Dolan

eLife Assessment This study provides an important advance in credibility-based learning research by demonstrating how feedback reliability can shape reward learning biases within a carefully controlled bandit task. The strength of the main findings, namely greater learning from credible feedback and robust computational modeling supported by strong parameter recovery and cross-fitting analyses, is compelling.

Abstract The neural processes underlying empathy are a subject of intense interest within the social neurosciences1,2,3. However, very little is known about how brain empathic responses are modulated by the affective link between individuals. We show here that empathic responses are modulated by learned preferences, a result consistent with economic models of social preferences4,5,6,7.