We recorded neural activity in male monkeys playing a variant of the game ‘chicken’ in which they made decisions to cooperate or not cooperate to obtain rewards of different sizes. Neurons in the middle superior temporal sulcus (mSTS)—previously implicated in social perception—signaled strategic information, including payoffs, intentions of the other player, reward outcomes and predictions about the other player. Moreover, a subpopulation of mSTS neurons selectively signaled cooperatively obtained rewards. Neurons in the anterior cingulate gyrus, previously implicated in vicarious reinforcement and empathy, carried less information about strategic variables, especially cooperative reward. Strategic signals were not reducible to perceptual information about the other player or motor contingencies. These findings suggest that the capacity to compute models of other agents has deep roots in the strategic social behavior of primates and that the anterior cingulate gyrus and the mSTS support these computations.

我们记录了雄性猴子在玩“小鸡”游戏的变体时的神经活动，在这种游戏中，它们做出合作或不合作的决定，以获得不同大小的奖励。颞上沟中部（mSTS）的神经元——以前与社会感知有关——发出战略信息信号，包括回报、其他玩家的意图、奖励结果和对其他玩家的预测。此外，mSTS 神经元亚群选择性地发出合作获得奖励的信号。前扣带回的神经元先前与替代强化和同理心有关，携带的有关策略变量的信息较少，尤其是合作奖励。战略信号不能简化为有关其他玩家或运动意外事件的感知信息。这些发现表明，计算其他智能体模型的能力深深植根于灵长类动物的战略社会行为，并且前扣带回和 mSTS 支持这些计算。