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CTN: Herbert Zheng Wu
February 6 @ 11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Title: Neural Basis of Leader–Follower Dynamics in Cooperative Behavior
Abstract: Cooperation allows social species to achieve outcomes that individuals cannot accomplish alone. Even in simple groups, cooperative behavior often depends on complementary social roles such as leaders and followers, yet the neural computations supporting these dynamic relationships are not well understood. Our lab investigates how the brain represents social partners, coordinates shared goals, and flexibly allocates control across individuals. Using a new mouse paradigm that captures naturalistic leader–follower behavior during joint foraging, we combine large-scale neural recording, circuit perturbation, and computational modeling to dissect the mechanisms that enable cooperative decision-making. We find that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex reflects both the individual’s role and the evolving social context, integrating self- and partner-related information to guide coordinated action. To probe latent strategies of the animals, we developed a multi-agent inverse reinforcement learning framework that infers the individual goals governing joint behavior, which closely mirror and are decodable from prefrontal activity. Together, these studies aim to reveal general principles by which distributed brain networks support higher-order social cognition and collective behavior.