Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Recent advances in technology have paved the way for human-agent interactions to become ubiquitous in our daily lives, anddecades worth of research on virtual agents have enhancedthese interactions. However, for the most part, the effect of dif-ferent types of agents on the human brain is unknown, and theneuroscience of human-agent interactions is rarely studied. Inthis study, we examine the underlying neural systems involvedin processing and responding to different types of negotiatingagents. More specifically, we show that different brain patternsare observed for various types of virtual agents; consequently,we can decode the strategy and emotional display of the agentbased on the counterpart’s brain activity. Using fMRI data, weanalyzed participants’ brain activity during negotiations withagents who show three different emotional expressions and usetwo different types of negotiation strategies. We demonstratethat, using Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis, we can reliably de-code agents’ emotional expressions based on the activity in theleft dorsal anterior insula, and also agents’ strategies based onthe activity in the frontal pole.