Federal Grant Award Summary

Rutgers University, Newark Division, received a $162,332 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279) effective August 20, 2026, with completion targeted for March 27, 2029. The project titled "Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Similarity, Trustworthiness, and Stress in Decision-Making" delivers a multi-part behavioral and neuroimaging research study designed to dissociate and characterize how trust and perceived similarity influence social decision-making, particularly in substance use contexts and under acute stress conditions.

The grant funds three primary research aims: (1) a trust game behavioral study with fictional partners varying orthogonally in trustworthiness and similarity, with behavioral data modeled using a modified social value model to quantify heuristic weighting; (2) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis employing representational similarity analysis to identify dissociable neural codes within brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and ventral striatum; and (3) stress-condition task repetition using the socially evaluated cold pressor task to assess how acute stress modulates heuristic reliance and biases decision-making toward similarity-based choices. The research deliverables include behavioral, physiological, computational, and neuroimaging data and analyses that advance understanding of social decision-making mechanisms relevant to addiction and substance use prevention.