Fig. 3.

Activity in the valuation system (vmPFC, amygdala, and VS ROIs independently localized by the MID task) mediated the observed relationship between target popularity and social cognition system activity (dmPFC, precuneus, and lTPJ ROIs independently localized by the person judgment task), with 64.6% of the total effect mediated (P < 0.01). See Methods, Fig. 2, and SI Text for details on how these systems were defined and independently localized. Further analyses confirmed that the data supported this mediation model over both (i) the alternative serial organization in which social cognition system activity operated as the mediator, and (ii) the parallel organization in which the two systems’ activity independently tracked target popularity (Results and SI Text).