Social gaze interaction powerfully shapes interpersonal communication. However, compared with social perception, very little is known about the neuronal underpinnings of real-life social gaze interaction. Here, we studied a large number of neurons spanning four regions in primate prefrontal-amygdala networks and demonstrate robust single-cell foundations of interactive social gaze in the orbitofrontal, dorsomedial prefrontal, and anterior cingulate cortices, in addition to the amygdala. Many neurons in these areas exhibited high temporal heterogeneity for social discriminability, with a selectivity bias for looking at a conspecific compared with an object. Notably, a large proportion of neurons in each brain region parametrically tracked the gaze of self or other, providing substrates for social gaze monitoring. Furthermore, several neurons displayed selective encoding of mutual eye contact in an agent-specific manner. These findings provide evidence of widespread implementations of interactive social gaze neurons in the primate prefrontal-amygdala networks during social gaze interaction.

社交目光互动有力地塑造了人际沟通。然而，与社会感知相比，人们对现实生活中社交凝视互动的神经元基础知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了灵长类前额叶-杏仁核网络中跨越四个区域的大量神经元，并证明了除了杏仁核之外，在眼眶额叶、背内侧前额叶和前扣带皮层中互动社交凝视的强大单细胞基础。这些区域的许多神经元在社会辨别力方面表现出高度的时间异质性，与观察同种物体和物体相比存在选择性偏差。值得注意的是，每个大脑区域的很大一部分神经元以参数方式跟踪自己或他人的注视，为社交注视监测提供了基础。此外，一些神经元以特定于代理的方式显示出对相互目光接触的选择性编码。这些发现提供了证据，证明在社交凝视互动过程中，灵长类前额叶杏仁核网络中互动社交凝视神经元的广泛应用。