Simultaneous functional MRI of two awake marmosets

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Primate Cognition
• Social Neuroscience

Background:

• Social cognition involves processing complex individual features between interacting individuals.
• Understanding social interaction in non-human primates requires advanced neuroimaging techniques.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a method for simultaneously measuring whole-brain activation in two socially interacting marmoset monkeys using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
• To investigate intra-brain and inter-brain neural responses during social interactions in marmosets.

Main Methods:

• Simultaneous whole-brain fMRI acquisition in two interacting marmosets.
• Development of specialized MRI hardware and image-processing pipelines tailored for social interaction studies.
• Comparison of brain activation patterns when viewing a live conspecific versus a pre-recorded video.

Main Results:

• The developed fMRI method successfully measured simultaneous brain activity in two interacting marmosets.
• Viewing a live conspecific, compared to a video, resulted in increased activation within the face-patch network.
• Demonstrated the capability to assess both intra-brain (within-individual) and inter-brain (between-individuals) neural dynamics.

Conclusions:

• This novel fMRI approach provides a powerful tool for studying social cognition and brain function in marmosets.
• The findings highlight the distinct neural processing of live social interaction versus passive observation.
• Opens new avenues for researching social function and dysfunction in non-human primate models.