The macaque medial prefrontal cortex simultaneously represents self and others' reward prediction error

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Primate Behavior

Background:

• Social learning requires predicting significant events and detecting prediction errors.
• It remains unclear if the brain computes reward prediction errors (RPEs) for both self (S-RPE) and others (O-RPE) simultaneously.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether primate brains can simultaneously compute S-RPE and O-RPE.
• To identify the specific neurons responsible for these computations.

Main Methods:

• Monkeys were conditioned with identical visual stimuli predicting different reward outcomes.
• Neural activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was recorded.
• Linear decoders were used to discriminate RPEs.

Main Results:

• Dorsomedial prefrontal neurons were found to represent both S-RPE and O-RPE simultaneously.
• Neuronal signatures of RPE were agent and sign specific, with distinct populations for positive and negative RPEs.
• A linear decoder could discriminate RPE based on O-RPE encoding neurons, but not S-RPE neurons.

Conclusions:

• The primate brain possesses neuronal mechanisms for simultaneously updating environmental stimulus values for self and others.
• These mechanisms are crucial for comprehending social environments and inferring others' perspectives.