Daniel Martí, Mattia Rigotti, et al.
Neural Computation
The social brain hypothesis posits that dedicated neural systems process social information. In support of this, neurophysiological data have shown that some brain regions are specialized for representing faces. It remains unknown, however, whether distinct anatomical substrates also represent more complex social variables, such as the hierarchical rank of individuals within a social group. Here we show that the primate amygdala encodes the hierarchical rank of individuals in the same neuronal ensembles that encode the rewards associated with nonsocial stimuli. By contrast, orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices lack strong representations of hierarchical rank while still representing reward values. These results challenge the conventional view that dedicated neural systems process social information. Instead, information about hierarchical rank-which contributes to the assessment of the social value of individuals within a group-is linked in the amygdala to representations of rewards associated with nonsocial stimuli.
Daniel Martí, Mattia Rigotti, et al.
Neural Computation
Anna Choromanska, Benjamin Cowen, et al.
ICML 2019
Inkit Padhi, Yair Schiff, et al.
ICASSP 2021
Malte J. Rasch, Tayfun Gokmen, et al.
Frontiers in Neuroscience