title: Goal or gold: overlapping reward processes in soccer players upon scoring and winning money.
abstract: Social rewards are important incentives for human behavior. This is especially true in team sports such as the most popular one worldwide: soccer. We investigated reward processing upon scoring a soccer goal in a standard two-versus-one situation and in comparison to winning in a monetary incentive task. The results show a strong overlap in brain activity between the two conditions in established reward regions of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, including the ventral striatum and ventromedial pre-frontal cortex. The three main components of reward-associated learning, i.e., reward probability (RP), reward reception (RR) and reward prediction errors (RPE) showed highly similar activation in both con-texts, with only the RR and RPE components displaying overlapping reward activity. Passing and shooting behavior did not correlate with individual egoism scores, but we observe a positive correlation be-tween egoism and activity in the left middle frontal gyrus upon scoring after a pass versus a direct shot. Our findings suggest that rewards in the context of soccer and monetary incentives are based on similar neural processes.
authors: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Department of Epileptology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Department of NeuroCognition/Imaging, Life&Brain Research Center, Bonn, Germany.
authors: Alexander Niklas
authors: AN
authors: Häusler
authors: Department of Psychiatry, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Division of Medical Psychology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
authors: Benjamin
authors: B
authors: Becker
authors: Department of NeuroCognition/Imaging, Life&Brain Research Center, Bonn, Germany.
authors: Marcel
authors: M
authors: Bartling
authors: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Department of Epileptology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Department of NeuroCognition/Imaging, Life&Brain Research Center, Bonn, Germany.
authors: Bernd
authors: B
authors: Weber
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003657:Decision Making; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000502:physiology; D011859:Radiography; D012201:Reward; D012916:Soccer / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires