Selective Prefrontal-Amygdala Circuit Interactions Underlie Social and Nonsocial Valuation in Rhesus Macaques

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Primate Research

Background:

• The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is crucial for goal-directed decision-making, and the medial frontal cortex (MFC) is vital for social cognition.
• Bilateral amygdala damage impairs both decision-making and social cognition.
• The functional necessity of amygdala interactions for the distinct roles of OFC and MFC remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the dissociable functions of the OFC and MFC depend on functional interactions with the amygdala.
• To determine the specific roles of prefrontal-amygdala circuits in social valuation and goal-directed decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Compared male rhesus macaques with crossed surgical disconnection of the amygdala and either MFC (MFC × AMY) or OFC (OFC × AMY) to unoperated controls (CON).
• Assessed social interest using food-retrieval latencies while viewing social/nonsocial stimuli.
• Evaluated goal-directed decision-making using a reinforcer devaluation task for object choices.

Main Results:

• The MFC × AMY group showed reduced food-retrieval latencies to conspecific videos, indicating impaired social valuation.
• The OFC × AMY group exhibited deficits in object choices after reinforcer devaluation, indicating impaired goal-directed decision-making.
• These findings highlight dissociable roles for MFC-amygdala and OFC-amygdala circuits.

Conclusions:

• The MFC requires functional interaction with the amygdala for normative social valuation.
• The OFC requires functional interaction with the amygdala for normative nonsocial (object) valuation.
• These prefrontal-amygdala circuits are functionally dissociable, supporting independent contributions to environmental cognitive appraisals.