Certain neurons in the brain store the social ranking information to inform decisions, while these ranking in a group are linked to the results of the competition, found a recent study by a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Lead author S. William Li, an MD/PhD student at the Massachusetts General Hospital, said that the social interactions in humans and animals occur generally in large groups, and these group interactions play an important role in the sociology, ecology, psychology, economics and political science.
The processes in the brain that drives the complex dynamic behavior of the social group is understood on a very minuscule level, in some measure because most of the neuroscience research till date has focused majorly on the behaviors of a pair of individuals interacting alone, said William Li.
In the current study, we were able to study the behavior of groups by developing a pattern in which large groups of mice were wirelessly followed across thousands of distinct competitive group interactions, Li further added.
Li and his colleagues found that the social ranking in the group of mice was closely linked to the results of competition, and by examining the recordings from neurons in the brains of mice, in real time, the team discovered that the neurons in the anterior cingulate region of the brain stores this social ranking information to inform upcoming decisions.
Inclusively, these neurons carried exceptionally comprehensive portrayal of the behavior of the group and their tendency as the animals contested together for food, in addition to the details about the available resources and the outcome of their interactions in the past, explains senior author Ziv M. Williams, MD, a neurosurgical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Together, these neurons were able to even foresee how successful the animal will be in the future, well before the onset of the competition, which means that these neurons most likely stimulated the animals’ competitive behavior based on whom they had interacted with, says Williams.
So, it could be safely said that by manipulating the actions of these neurons, an animal’s competitive effort could be artificially increased or decreased and therefore can be used to guide their potential to successfully compete against others. “In simpler words, we could tune up or tune down the animal’s competitive instinct and could do so judiciously without affecting other characteristics of their behavior such as simple speed or motivation,” added Williams.
The findings of this study indicate that competitive success is not mere a derivative of an animal’s physical fitness or strength, but in fact, is strongly determined by the signals in its brain that affects the competitive drive.
These distinct neurons are capable to combine particulars about the individual’s surroundings, circumstances, social group settings, and the rewards that can be achieved so as to calculate how to behave in the best possible way under specific conditions, says Li.
Additionally to providing understandings into group behavior and competition, in various sociologic or economic or other situations, the identification of the neurons that control these characteristics in animals may help scientists to potentially design experiments which may help to better understand the scenarios in which the brain is wired differently.
Williams said that developing an understanding of the group behavior and the competition holds relevance to these neurocognitive disorders, but until now, how this happens in the brain has largely remained unexplored.
Additional co-authors include Omer Zeliger, Leah Strahs, Raymundo Báez-Mendoza, Lance M. Johnson, and Adian McDonald Wojciechowski.
Journal Reference: S. William Li, Omer Zeliger, Leah Strahs, Raymundo Báez-Mendoza, Lance M. Johnson, Aidan McDonald Wojciechowski, Ziv M. Williams. Frontal neurons driving competitive behaviour and ecology of social groups. Nature, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04000-5
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