Many social species use eye contact to guide social behaviors. To study how visual cues shape social decision making, Franch et al. wirelessly recorded eye movements and activity in the visual and prefrontal cortices in two pairs of freely moving macaque monkeys. To retrieve food rewards, paired monkeys — who could see each other through a transparent screen — each had to press and hold a button and, crucially, had to do this simultaneously. The monkeys learned to coordinate and speed up their button presses over time. They also increasingly looked at their partner just before or after their own button press, which drove cooperation. Neuron populations in area V4 and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) encoded eye fixations on the reward and the partner, and DLPFC populations additionally encoded self- and partner-button presses and the decision to cooperate; decoding accuracy from these populations increased across sessions as the monkeys learned to cooperate. Moreover, spike timing during reward fixation, partner fixation and self-button presses became more coordinated between V4 and the DLPFC over time. These findings in freely behaving monkeys increase our understanding of visually guided social decision making and cooperation.

Original reference: Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07084-x (2024)

许多社会物种使用眼神交流来指导社会行为。为了研究视觉线索如何影响社会决策，Franch 等人。无线记录了两对自由移动的猕猴的眼球运动以及视觉和前额皮质的活动。为了获得食物奖励，配对的猴子（它们可以通过透明屏幕看到对方）每只猴子都必须按住一个按钮，而且最重要的是，必须同时执行此操作。随着时间的推移，猴子学会了协调和加快按下按钮的速度。他们还越来越多地在自己按下按钮之前或之后观察他们的合作伙伴，这促进了合作。 V4 区和背外侧前额叶皮层 (DLPFC) 的神经元群编码对奖励和伙伴的注视，DLPFC 群还编码自我和伙伴按钮按下以及合作决定；随着猴子们学会了合作，这些群体的解码准确性在整个训练过程中都得到了提高。此外，随着时间的推移，奖励固定、伙伴固定和自我按钮按下期间的峰值时间在 V4 和 DLPFC 之间变得更加协调。这些在自由行为的猴子身上的发现增加了我们对视觉引导的社会决策和合作的理解。

Original reference: Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07084-x (2024)