Vasily Klucharev

• National Research University Higher School of Economics

This study investigates decision-making under uncertainty, focusing on the role of the right frontopolar cortex (FPC). Previous neuroimaging studies utilized the "cascade model" and demonstrated a role of FPC in in the frontopolar in cognitive branching (Collins & Koechlin, 2012; Palminteri et al., 2017). We employed brain stimulation to test a hyp...

Introduction Setting the right price is crucial for effectively positioning products in the market. Conversely, setting a “non-optimal price”—one that is perceived as much lower or higher than the product's true market value—can negatively influence consumer decisions and business results. Methods We conducted two electroencephalography (EEG) stud...

Effective health promotion may benefit from understanding how persuasion emerges. While earlier research has identified brain regions implicated in persuasion, these studies often relied on event-related analyses and frequently simplified persuasive communications. The present study investigates the neural basis of valuation change induced by a per...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286648.].

Introduction Difficult choices between two equally attractive options result in a cognitive discrepancy between dissonant cognitions such as preferences and actions often followed by a sense of psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance. It can lead to changes in the desirability of options: the chosen option becomes more desirable, whe...

This study provides evidence that the posterior parietal cortex is causally involved in risky decision making via the processing of reward values but not reward probabilities. In the within-group experimental design, participants performed a binary lottery choice task following transcranial magnetic stimulation of the right posterior parietal corte...

According to cognitive dissonance theory, a discrepancy between preferences and actions may lead to the revaluation of preferences, increasing preference for the chosen options and decreasing for the rejected options. This phenomenon is known as the spreading of alternatives (SoA), which results in a choice-induced preference change (CIPC). Previou...

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is a powerful tool for elucidating the causal relationship between specific brain regions and behaviour. While tES generates consistent results in sensorimotor research, cognitive studies present a more diverse, often ambiguous response to stimulation. To further understand these complexities, our study emp...

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the ability to use the brain activity of a group of individuals to forecast the behavior of an independent group. In the current study, we attempted to forecast aggregate choices in a popular restaurant chain. During our functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, 22 participants were exposed to 78 pho...

A seminal study of Libet et al. (1983) provided a popular approach to compare introspective timing of movement execution (the M-time) and the intention to move (the W-time) with respect to the onset of the readiness potential (RP). The difference between the W-time and the RP onsets contributed significantly to the current free-will discussion, ins...

Human societies benefit from social norms that increase cooperation and support social order. Hence, the understanding of effective mechanisms enforcing norms is crucial. One of such mechanisms is "third-party punishment" (TPP) - a form of social punishment that could be delivered by a third-party, not directly affected by the actions of the norm v...

Introduction: Sugar consumption is associated with many negative health consequences. It is, therefore, important to understand what can effectively influence individuals to consume less sugar. We recently showed that a healthy eating call by a health expert can significantly decrease the willingness to pay (WTP) for sugar-containing food. Here, we...

This study provides evidence that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is causally involved in risky decision making via the processing of reward values but not reward probabilities. In the within-group experimental design, participants performed a binary lottery choice task following transcranial magnetic stimulation of the right PPC, left PPC and...

Recent studies have demonstrated that the brain activity of a group of people can be used to forecast choices at the population level. In this study, we attempted to neuroforecast aggregate consumer behavior of Internet users. During our electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking study, participants were exposed to 10 banners that were also used...

In this study, we provide causal evidence that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) supports the computation of subjective value in choices under risk via its involvement in probability weighting. Following offline continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) of the DLPFC subjects (N = 30, mean age 23.6, 56% females) comple...

Accumulating multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) results from fMRI studies suggest that information is represented in fingerprint patterns of activations and deactivations during perception, emotions, and cognition. We postulate that these fingerprint patterns might reflect neuronal-population level sparse code documented in two-photon calcium ima...

Recent studies have revealed types of eating nudges that can steer consumers toward choosing healthier options. However, most of the previously studied interventions target individual decisions and are not directed to changing consumers’ underlying perception of unhealthy food. Here, we investigate how a healthy eating call—first-person narrative b...

Why do people often exhaust unregulated common (shared) natural resources but manage to preserve similar private resources? To answer this question, in this study we combine a neurobiological, economic, and cognitive modeling approach. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging on 50 participants, we show that a sharp decrease of common and privat...

A number of neuromarketing studies employed brain responses called event-related potentials or ERPs as neural markers of brand associations. The use of the N400 component of ERPs in particular appeared to be the promising to study typicality of product-brand associations and their role for brand extension (Wang et al., 2012). The question, however,...

Movies and narratives are increasingly utilized as stimuli in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG) studies. Emotional reactions of subjects, what they pay attention to, what they memorize, and their cognitive interpretations are all examples of inner experiences that can differ...

We used an eye-tracking technique to investigate the effect of green zones and car ownership on the attractiveness of the courtyards of multistorey apartment buildings. Two interest groups—20 people who owned a car and 20 people who did not a car—observed 36 images of courtyards. Images were digitally modified to manipulate the spatial arrangement...

In addition to probabilities of monetary gains and losses, personality traits, socio-economic factors, and specific contexts such as emotions and framing influence financial risk taking. Here, we investigated the effects of joyful, neutral, and sad mood states on participants’ risk-taking behaviour in a simple task with safe and risky options. We a...

More than a decade of neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies point to a crucial role for the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) in prosocial behavior. The intuitive prosociality model postulates that the rDLPFC controls intuitive prosocial behavior, whereas the reflective model assumes that the rDLPFC controls selfish impulses during...

Value-based decision making in complex environments, such as those with uncertain and volatile mapping of reward probabilities onto options, may engender computational strategies that are not necessarily optimal in terms of normative frameworks but may ensure effective learning and behavioral flexibility in conditions of limited neural computationa...

For over a decade, neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies have investigated neural mechanisms of third-party punishment, a key instrument for social norms enforcement. However, the neural dynamics underlying these mechanisms are still unclear. Previous electroencephalographic studies on third-party punishment have shown that inter-brain connect...

Females demonstrate greater risk aversion than males on a variety of tasks, but the underlying neurobiological basis is still unclear. We studied how theta (4–7 Hz) oscillations at rest related to three different measures of risk taking. Thirty-five participants (15 females) completed the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task (BRET), which allowed us to measu...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Females demonstrate greater risk aversion than males on a variety of tasks, but the underlying neurobiological basis is still unclear. We studied how theta (4-7 Hz) oscillations at rest related to three different measures of risk taking. Thirty-five participants (15 females) completed the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task (BRET), which allowed us to measu...

People often change their beliefs by succumbing to an opinion of others. Such changes are often referred to as effects of social influence. While some previous studies have focused on the reinforcement learning mechanisms of social influence or on its internalization, others have reported evidence of changes in sensory processing evoked by social i...

Both human and animal studies have demonstrated remarkable findings of experience-induced plasticity in the cortex. Here, we investigated whether the widely used monetary incentive delay (MID) task changes the neural processing of incentive cues that code expected monetary outcomes. We used a novel auditory version of the MID task, where participan...

In games of incomplete information individual players make decisions facing a combination of structural uncertainty about the underlying parameters of the environment, and strategic uncertainty about the actions undertaken by their partners. How well are human actors able to cope with these uncertainties, and what models best describe their learnin...

Narratives, in the form of, e.g., written stories, mouth-to-mouth accounts, audiobooks, fiction movies, and media-feeds, powerfully shape the perception of reality and widely influence human decision-making. In this review, we describe findings from recent neuroimaging studies unraveling how narratives influence the human brain, thus shaping percep...

Why do people often exhaust unregulated common (shared) natural resources but manage to preserve similar private resources? To answer this question, in the present work we combine a neurobiological, economic, and cognitive modeling approach. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging on 50 participants, we show that sharp depletion of common and p...

Conformity is a form of social influence in which individuals align their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with other members of a group. Numerous neuroimaging findings support the hypothesis that human conformity is underlined by the basic (dopamine-related) learning mechanism: conflicts with a group opinion generate a “social” reward prediction...

Numerous cognitive studies have demonstrated experience-induced plasticity in the primary sensory cortex, indicating that repeated decisions could modulate sensory processing. In this context, we investigated whether an auditory version of the monetary incentive delay (MID) task could change the neural processing of the incentive cues that code exp...

Recent studies have demonstrated that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right temporoparietal junction are causally involved in social norm compliance: its activation corresponds with the third-party norm enforcement behavior, known as third-party punishment. The current study aimed to address the inconsistencies in effects of brain...

Competition for resources is a fundamental characteristic of evolution. Auctions have been widely used to model competition of individuals for resources, and bidding behavior plays a major role in social competition. Yet how humans learn to bid efficiently remains an open question. We used model‐based neuroimaging to investigate the neural mechanis...

This paper assesses a number of contemporary neurophysiological and philosophical approaches to the problem of the existence of free will. We present arguments demonstrating the weakness of the positions of modern scientific schools maintaining conventional concepts of freedom of choice in humans. The paper demonstrates that the operation of stocha...

Competition for resources is a fundamental characteristic of evolution. Auctions have been widely used to model competition of individuals for resources, and bidding behavior plays a major role in social competition. Yet how humans learn to bid efficiently remains an open question. We used model-based neuroimaging to investigate the neural mechanis...

The functional role of high beta oscillations (20–35 Hz) during feedback processing has been suggested to reflect unexpected gains. Using a novel gambling task that separates gains and losses across blocks and directly compares reception of monetary rewards to a ‘no-reward/punishment’ condition with equal probability we aimed to further investigate...

Reflecting the discrepancy between received and predicted outcomes, the reward prediction error (RPE) plays an important role in learning in a dynamic environment. A number of studies suggested that the feedback-related negativity (FRN) component of an event-related potential, known to be associated with unexpected outcomes, encodes RPEs. While FRN...

Modern neuroimaging studies begin to explore neurobiological mechanisms of social norms enforcement. Several regions of frontal lobes and temporo-parieto-occipital cortex play a key role in decision making of social punishment of fairness' norm violation. The cutting-edge methods of brain stimulation allow to change frequency and intensity of socia...

In this study, we investigated the effect of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on voluntary risky decision making and executive control in humans. Stimulation was delivered online at 5 Hz (θ), 10 Hz (α), 20 Hz (β), and 40 Hz (γ) on the left and right frontal area while participants performed a modified risky decision-making task....

Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that our preferences are modulated by the mere act of choosing. A choice between two similarly valued alternatives creates psychological tension (cognitive dissonance) that is reduced by a postdecisional reevaluation of the alternatives. We measured EEG of human subjects during rest and free-choice paradigm. Our...

Humans often adjust their opinions to the perceived opinions of others. Neural responses to a perceived match or mismatch between individual and group opinions have been investigated previously, but some findings are inconsistent. In this study, we used magnetoencephalographic source imaging to investigate further neural responses to the perceived...

The paper discusses modern neuroscientific and philosophical approaches in studies of free will. Author demonstrates weaknesses of the arguments supporting the tradition view on free will. Both a stochasticity of neural processes and top-down neural regulation do not assume a freedom of choice. © 2017 Maik Nauka-Interperiodica Publishing. All right...

The decision-making process is exposed to modulatory factors, and, according to the expected value (EV) concept the two most influential factors are magnitude of prospective behavioural outcome and probability of receiving this outcome. The discrepancy between received and predicted outcomes is reflected by the reward prediction error (RPE), which...

Every day we face not only certain risks, but also risky and non-risky decisions of people surrounding us. How do we make our decision to take risk or not? Do we gain extra utility from favorable payoff comparison or from conforming to the decisions of others? We test social conformity in decisions under risk using independent lotteries, therefore,...

Reward prediction error (RPE) reflects the discrepancy between received and predicted outcomes and therefore plays an important role in learning in a dynamic environment. Using electroencephalographic measures of response to obtained and expected outcomes, previous studies have suggested that feedback-related negativity (FRN) could code RPE. It has...

Our decisions are affected not only by objective information about the available options but also by other people. Recent brain imaging studies have adopted the cognitive neuroscience approach for studying the neural mechanisms of social influence. A number of studies have shown that social influence is associated with neural activity in the medial...

To choose optimally, people must consider both the potential value and the probability of a desired outcome. This idea is reflected in the expected value theory, which considers both the potential value of different courses of action and the probability that each action will lead to a desired outcome. Accordingly, during decision-making people choo...

Informational cascades can occur when rationally acting individuals decide independently of their private information and follow the decisions of preceding decision-makers. In the process of updating beliefs, differences in the weighting of private and publicly available social information may modulate the probability that a cascade starts in a dec...

Humans often change their beliefs or behavior due to the behavior or opinions of others. This study explored, with the use of human event-related potentials (ERPs), whether social conformity is based on a general performance-monitoring mechanism. We tested the hypothesis that conflicts with a normative group opinion evoke a feedback-related negativ...

We often change our behavior to conform to real or imagined group pressure. Social influence on our behavior has been extensively studied in social psychology, but its neural mechanisms have remained largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that the transient downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex by theta-burst transcranial magnetic sti...

We often change our decisions and judgments to conform with normative group behavior. However, the neural mechanisms of social conformity remain unclear. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, that conformity is based on mechanisms that comply with principles of reinforcement learning. We found that individual judgments of facia...

Bekende personen worden vaak ingehuurd voor reclamecampagnes. In dit onderzoek laten we zien dat een hoge gepercipieerde deskundigheid van de bekende persoon voor het product, sterk kan bijdragen aan het succes van dergelijke campagnes. Een expert zorgt zowel voor een beter geheugen voor het aangeprezen product als een hogere koopintentie. Met de t...

Celebrity endorsement is omnipresent. However, despite its prevalence, it is unclear why celebrities are more persuasive than (equally attractive) non-famous endorsers. The present study investigates which processes underlie the effect of fame on product memory and purchase intention by the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging methods. We f...

Human behaviour is affected by various forms of persuasion. The general persuasive effect of high expertise of the communicator, often referred to as 'expert power', is well documented. We found that a single exposure to a combination of an expert and an object leads to a long-lasting positive effect on memory for and attitude towards the object. U...

We examined how emotional context influences processing of emotionally neutral acoustic stimuli in the human auditory cortex. Nine subjects performed a simple discrimination task. In the positive-emotional trials correct performance was awarded with money, whereas in the negative-emotional trials, correct performance resulted in avoidance of the lo...

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of short-term repetitive electrical stimulation (rES training session) on the motor-evoked hemodynamic responses. The fMRI echo-planar images (EPI) were recorded before and after the rES training. The right median nerve (MN) was stimulated during rES. The rES training resulted in a significant...

This study aimed at determining how the human brain automatically processes phoneme categories irrespective of the large acoustic inter-speaker variability. Subjects were presented with 450 different speech stimuli, equally distributed across the [a], [i], and [u] vowel categories, and each uttered by a different male speaker. A 306-channel magneto...

Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 11 subjects watching photographs of angry and happy faces with different gaze directions. ERPs to right averted gaze differed from those to straight and left averted gaze at 85 and 460 ms whereas ERPs to happy and angry expressions differed at 115, 330 and 380 ms. We suggest that short-latency effe...

We studied the interactions in neural processing of auditory and visual speech by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Unisensory (auditory - A and visual - V) and audiovisual (AV) vowels were presented to 11 subjects. AV vowels were phonetically either congruent (e.g., acoustic /a/ and visual /a/) or incongruent (e.g., acoustic /a/ and...

Earlier studies have indicated that patients claiming to be sensitive to electromagnetic fields, so-called electrical hypersensitivity (EHS), have a dysbalance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation. This paper focuses on a possible dysbalance in the ANS among EHS patients by the use of long-term monitoring of electrocardiogram (ECG) in b...

Identification of emotional expressions of a Talking Head (TH) were evaluated and compared to that of natural faces. In addition, the effect of static (pictures) and dynamic (video sequences) stimuli was studied. Natural stimuli consisted of six basic emotional expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise). Two expression sets...

In the present pilot study we have investigated the effects of computer monitor jitter induced by an external magnetic field on the video display unit (VDU) user's performance in reading and search–highlight tasks, as well as on the heart rate (HR). Additionally, attention and short-term memory were tested before and after VDU work under different...