An increasing amount of research effort is being directed toward investigating the neural bases of social cognition from a systems neuroscience perspective. Evidence from multiple animal species is beginning to provide a mechanistic understanding of the substrates of social behaviors at multiple levels of neurobiology, ranging from those underlying high-level social constructs in humans and their more rudimentary underpinnings in monkeys to circuit-level and cell-type-specific instantiations of social behaviors in rodents. Here we review literature examining the neural mechanisms of social decision-making in humans, non-human primates and rodents, focusing on the amygdala and the medial and orbital prefrontal cortical regions and their functional interactions. We also discuss how the neuropeptide oxytocin impacts these circuits and their downstream effects on social behaviors. Overall, we conclude that regulated interactions of neuronal activity in the prefrontal–amygdala pathways critically contribute to social decision-making in the brains of primates and rodents.

越来越多的研究工作正致力于从系统神经科学的角度研究社会认知的神经基础。来自多种动物物种的证据开始提供对多层次神经生物学社会行为基础的机械理解，范围从人类潜在的高级社会结构及其在猴子中更基本的基础到电路水平和细胞类型-啮齿动物社会行为的具体实例。在这里，我们回顾了研究人类、非人类灵长类动物和啮齿动物社会决策神经机制的文献，重点关注杏仁核、内侧和眶前额叶皮质区域及其功能相互作用。我们还讨论了神经肽催产素如何影响这些回路及其对社会行为的下游影响。总体而言，我们得出结论，前额叶 - 杏仁核通路中神经元活动的调节相互作用对灵长类动物和啮齿动物大脑的社会决策至关重要。