Social interaction behavior and the macaque orbitofrontal lobes – SIBEMOL

Recent studies of normal and pathological social and emotional behavior have identified a set of brain areas necessary for recognizing and responding to social stimuli. Yet, little is known about the specific neuronal mechanisms involved in these functions. We will address this issue in a non-human primate model, the macaque monkey. Monkeys form complex social groups and exhibit a range of prosocial behaviors that are closely related to our own and that depend on the same set of neural structures. Our objective is to characterize neural response properties in the medial prefrontal cortex, a key region in the so-called “social brain”, while pairs of monkeys perform cooperative and competitive social interaction tasks inspired from behavioral economics. Systematic mapping of neuronal activity throughout the medial frontal cortex and reversible lesions will be conducted in order to identify key subdivisions and their functional implication in both normal and abnormal social behavior.