Multimodal imaging for identifying brain markers of human prosocial behavior

Abstract How is the high degree of prosocial behavior that characterizes humans achieved? Here, we examined the structural and functional basis of the human brain with prosocial behavior using multimodal brain imaging data and 15 economic games. We identified that stronger interhemispheric connectivity, greater corpus callosum volume, higher functional segregation and integration, and fewer myelin maps combined with a thicker cortex were strongly associated with prosocial behavior. These associations were found especially in the social brain regions. This suggests that the strength of functional/structural connectivity between the left and right hemispheres, the strength of modular and efficient networks, and the high number of non-myelinated cells (i.e., dendrites, spines, synapses, and glia) are strongly associated with higher prosocial behavior in humans, particularly in the social brain regions.