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’.

关于社会伙伴的信息对灵长类动物来说具有天生的价值。关于消费哪些信息源的决定非常自然，但也很复杂，对大脑的决策网络提出了异常强烈的要求。特别是，眶额皮层 (OFC) 和外侧前额叶皮层 (LPFC) 在决策和社会行为中都发挥着关键作用，这表明在社会信息寻求中也可能发挥作用。为了测试这个想法，我们开发了一个“频道冲浪”任务，其中向猴子展示了一系列 5 秒的视频片段，这些视频片段是在野外进行自然行为的同种动物。使用物种典型行为的 ethogram（社会信息的重要来源）逐帧注释视频。在每个剪辑之间，猴子需要在目标之间进行选择，这些目标决定了接下来会看到哪个剪辑。猴子在播放过程中的凝视表明不同的参与取决于呈现的行为。OFC 和 LPFC 中的神经元都对选择目标和视频做出反应，并在视频观看过程中区分了 ethogram 中的一部分行为。这些发现表明，OFC 和 LPFC 都在处理用于指导动态信息搜索决策的社会信息。

本文是主题问题“非人类灵长类动物经济行为的存在和流行”的一部分。