Cortical-Striatal Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Altruistic Decisions

Altruistic decisions, the act of benefiting others at a personal cost, are fundamental to social interaction and cooperation. However, the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying altruistic decisions remain largely underexplored. This project aims to investigate how individuals evaluate costs and rewards to make altruistic decisions, focusing on the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and its interaction with the striatum. Using an ethologically relevant model system that offers unique advantages due to its cooperative social behaviors and accessible neural recordings, I will study altruistic decisions in both cooperative and competitive contexts. In Aim 1, I will examine how varying physical costs influence altruistic behaviors in cooperative tasks. Behavioral and neural data will be analyzed to understand how the MPFC integrates self and partner effort levels to guide decisions. Aim 2 will explore altruistic decisions in competitive contexts by manipulating reward inequity, focusing on how the MPFC supports selfish and altruistic strategies and how reward size differences modulate these dynamics. Aim 3 will focus on the MPFC-striatal circuit, investigating its role in altruistic decisions using wireless high-density neural recordings and biologically constrained multi-area recurrent neural network models. These models will replicate behavioral and neural data from experimental work, generate testable hypotheses, and allow causal manipulation of circuit properties. By integrating naturalistic behavioral paradigms, advanced neural recording techniques, and computational modeling, this research will uncover the neural computations and circuitry underlying strategic altruism. The findings will significantly advance our understanding of prosocial decision-making and have broad implications for addressing psychiatric disorders with social deficits, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia. This work aligns with my long-term career goal of establishing an independent research program that bridges experimental and computational neuroscience to study the neural basis of strategic prosocial behaviors and contribute to translational research on social dysfunction. Project Number: 1K99MH142687-01 | Fiscal Year: 2026 | NIH Institute/Center: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) | Principal Investigator: Weikang Shi | Institution: YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CT | Award Amount: $121,842 | Activity Code: K99 | Study Section: Special Emphasis Panel[ZRG1 ICN-N (92)] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11281468