Mechanisms Regulating Complex Social Behavior

 描述（由申请人提供）：适当的社会行为往往需要自我控制。神经精神疾病（例如，精神分裂症、成瘾）以及疾病状态（例如，艾滋病毒阳性，大脑病变）可能导致涉及自我控制的神经机制的变化-通常在社会环境中表现得最强烈。了解大脑如何识别社会环境，评估潜在的结果，并指导选择适当的行为，将提供对这些疾病和新治疗方法的发展的洞察力。最近的工作-包括我们的小组-表明，颞顶叶交界处（TPJ）的神经活动信号与识别社会背景相关的信息，这些社会信号影响眶额皮层（OFC）和腹侧纹状体（VS）的评价过程，社会价值信号告知腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）的奖励比较过程。然而，这种现在标准的社会决策模型仍然没有回答关于大脑功能和功能障碍的关键问题，特别是社会环境如何加强在疾病中观察到的适应不良决策。我们提出并实证检验了一个新的两阶段神经回路模型的社会决策。第一阶段涉及社会背景的识别，我们假设依赖于 TPJ的计算影响了其他地方随后的估值和决策过程。在第二阶段，控制过程塑造了朝向社会目标的持续行为（例如，最大限度地获取关于他人的信息，塑造人际声誉），我们称之为社会控制。我们建议使用在人类和猴子中进行的一组综合实验来评估该模型。我们将使用类似的任务，操纵社会背景的性质和质量（例如，合作或竞争）进行决策，涉及社会和非社会奖励结果，并提供来自人类功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）、猴子神经生理学记录和两个物种的重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）（包括猴子的同步神经记录）的补充信息。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Appropriate social behavior often demands self-control. Both neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, addiction) as well as disease states (e.g., HIV positivity, brain lesions) can lead to changes in the neural mechanisms involved in self-control - often with effects most strongly manifested in social contexts. Understanding how the brain identifies social contexts, evaluates potential outcomes, and guides selection of appropriate behavior would provide insight into these disorders and the development of new treatments. Recent work - including from our group - demonstrates that neural activity in temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) signals information relevant for identifying social context, that these social signals influence valuation processes in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventral striatum (VS), and that social value signals inform reward comparison processes in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Yet, this now-standard model for social decision making leaves unanswered key questions about brain function and dysfunction, especially how social contexts can potentiate maladaptive decision making observed in disorders. We propose and empirically test a novel two-stage neural circuit model of social decisions. The first stage involves identification of a social context, which we hypothesize relies on computations in TPJ that shape subsequent valuation and decision processes elsewhere. In a second stage, control processes shape ongoing behavior toward social goals (e.g., maximizing the acquisition of information about others, shaping interpersonal reputations), which we refer to as social control. We propose to evaluate this model using an integrated set of experiments conducted in humans and monkeys. We will use similar tasks that manipulate the nature and quality of social contexts (e.g., cooperative or competitive) for decision making, involve both social and non-social reward outcomes, and provide complementary information from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans, neurophysiological recordings in monkeys, and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in both species (including simultaneous neural recordings in monkeys).