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Ideas spread across social networks, but not everyone is equally positioned to be a successful recommender. Do individuals with more opportunities to connect otherwise unconnected others—high information brokers—use their brains differently than low information brokers when making recommendations? We test the hypothesis that those with more opportunities for information brokerage may use brain systems implicated in considering the thoughts, perspectives, and mental states of others (i.e. ‘mentalizing’) more when spreading ideas. We used social network analysis to quantify individuals’ opportunities for information brokerage. This served as a predictor of activity within meta-analytically defined neural regions associated with mentalizing (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, temporal parietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, /posterior cingulate cortex, middle temporal gyrus) as participants received …