Department of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Mar;376(1819):20190666. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0666. Epub 2021 Jan 11.
Information about social partners is innately valuable to primates. Decisions about which sources of information to consume are highly naturalistic but also complex and place unusually strong demands on the brain's decision network. In particular, both the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) play key roles in decision making and social behaviour, suggesting a likely role in social information-seeking as well. To test this idea, we developed a 'channel surfing' task in which monkeys were shown a series of 5 s video clips of conspecifics engaged in natural behaviours at a field site. Videos were annotated frame-by-frame using an ethogram of species-typical behaviours, an important source of social information. Between each clip, monkeys were presented with a choice between targets that determined which clip would be seen next. Monkeys' gaze during playback indicated differential engagement depending on what behaviours were presented. Neurons in both OFC and LPFC responded to choice targets and to video, and discriminated a subset of the behaviours in the ethogram during video viewing. These findings suggest that both OFC and LPFC are engaged in processing social information that is used to guide dynamic information-seeking decisions. This article is part of the theme issue 'Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates'.
有关社交伙伴的信息对灵长类动物来说具有内在价值。关于选择哪些信息来源进行消费的决策具有高度的自然性，但也很复杂，对大脑的决策网络提出了异常高的要求。特别是，眶额皮质（OFC）和外侧前额叶皮质（LPFC）在决策和社会行为中都起着关键作用，这表明它们在社会信息搜索中也可能发挥作用。为了验证这一想法，我们开发了一种“频道冲浪”任务，在该任务中，猴子会观看一系列 5 秒的同种个体在野外进行自然行为的视频片段。使用物种典型行为的行为谱对每个视频进行逐帧注释，这是一种重要的社交信息来源。在每个视频之间，猴子会在目标之间进行选择，以确定下一个要观看的视频。猴子在播放过程中的注视表明，根据呈现的行为，它们的参与度存在差异。OFC 和 LPFC 中的神经元会对选择目标和视频做出反应，并在观看视频时对行为谱中的一部分行为进行区分。这些发现表明，OFC 和 LPFC 都参与了处理社会信息，这些信息被用来指导动态信息搜索决策。本文是主题为“非人类灵长类动物中经济行为的存在和普遍性”的特刊的一部分。
