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Mice learn to avoid the rat race

Mice can learn to overcome their naturally aggressive approach to conflict resolution, instead adopting a cooperative strategy. This discovery provides a simple animal model in which to investigate a complex social behaviour.
  1. Scott M. Rennie

    1. Scott M. Rennie is in the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, 1400-038 Lisbon, Portugal.

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  2. Michael. L. Platt

    1. Michael. L. Platt is in the Departments of Neuroscience, of Psychology and of Marketing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.

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Social interactions are often complicated by conflicts of interest. Humans and other animals adopt diverse strategies to resolve such disputes. Stronger individuals can often secure their interests at the expense of weaker individuals, but this strategy can be costly if it requires aggression. Strategies that are more cooperative and egalitarian can also develop among kin1 or individuals who reciprocate in repeated interactions2. Theoretical and experimental studies suggest that cooperation depends on cognitive control processes that override the impulse to acquire tangible rewards3. This theory now finds support from Choe et al.4, writing in Nature Communications. The authors demonstrate that pairs of mice can learn to coordinate their behaviour to achieve an egalitarian distribution of rewards — but only when rewards are delivered directly to the brain, rather than through food.

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Nature 553, 284-285 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-017-08835-9

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