The region is only "known to be involved in processing social information". Saying that "the results suggest social closeness is more important than shared beliefs when evaluating others" is a long long shot just by observing that the region gets more active with friends. Our brains could simply be more active because with our friends we have more memories that our brains needs to look up, process and relate with whatever input we're getting from them. I didn't have the chance too read the original research papers but saying that "The results suggest social closeness is more important than shared beliefs when evaluating others" is too vague. I also wonder whether this phenomenon also happens with friendly people.

António Damásio, a well-known neuropsychologist already extensively explained why are emotions intrinsically linked to rational thought in his book "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", published in 1994. He basically says that without emotion you wouldn't have motivation to think rationally and he studied the case of Phineas Gage, a construction work that got an iron rod crossing through his skull and survived, but stopped having feelings after the accident. I still doubt that they'll get something useful with this project. There is an infinite number of variables that stimulates our emotions and we can't expose a computer to. Not to say that even if we could, nowadays supercomputers doesn't have enough processing power to do the job.