Prefrontal mechanisms of social interaction strategy

Advanced social cognition enables individuals to apply complex strategies when interacting with others. However, studying the neural bases of strategic social interactions has proven to be challenging. This is largely because standard laboratory animal models of neuroscience do not reliably exhibit complex interaction strategies, such as cooperative strategies, let alone reciprocity based on altruism. Here, we will build upon our newly developed automated pulling paradigms, video-based tracking of facial/body features, and wireless high-density neural recording to understand interaction strategies and their neural underpinnings. Our innovations allow studying the neural bases of interaction strategy with precise, naturalistic, behavioral data, overcoming the difficulty of using naturalistic behaviors in experimental settings and collecting neural data in observational field studies. We will determine interaction strategies used by freely moving dyads in four novel social interaction tasks with distinct payoff matrices designed to elicit diverse strategies. We will study the neural codes and population dynamics in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), an area that is implicated in reward-guided decision-making, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a major prefrontal node implicated in action-based strategy. We will apply computational modeling to test hypothesized dependencies among behavioral variables to describe partner-specific social strategies and response-specific action strategies. We hypothesize that OFC integrates task context (payoff matrix of social interaction), social relationship (sex, dominance, familiarity), and reward history (outcome from previous social interaction) to compute partner-specific social strategies. By contrast, we hypothesize that dlPFC represents response-specific action strategies that are necessary for adaptive behavioral patterns. In Aim 1, we will investigate diverse interaction strategies employed by dyads in the social interaction paradigms and use computational modeling to formally describe these strategies. In Aim 2, we will use a wireless, high-density recording approach and examine the neural code and population dynamics underlying diverse social strategies in OFC and action strategies in dlPFC. Aim 3 will investigate the OFC-dlPFC interactions that facilitate the transformation from social strategies to action strategies. Overall, this proposal will elucidate the behavioral and neural mechanisms of social interaction strategy in the prefrontal cortex for enabling diverse and adaptive social interactions. Project Number: 1RF1MH138396-01A1 | Fiscal Year: 2025 | NIH Institute/Center: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) | Principal Investigator: Steve Chang (+2 co-PIs) | Institution: YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CT | Award Amount: $3,299,818 | Activity Code: RF1 | Study Section: Biobehavioral Regulation, Learning and Ethology Study Section[BRLE] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11225790