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Social behavior

Altruism and social rewards

Scheggia et al.1 have established a behavioral paradigm to explore preferences for ‘altruistic’ or ‘selfish’ choice behavior in mice. The results suggest that altruistic behavior develops through reinforcement learning driven by social rewards, which is controlled by interactions between the basolateral amygdala and prelimbic cortex.

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Fig. 1: A social decision-making assay for probing ‘altruistic’ and ‘selfish’ choices in mice.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by grant IBS-R001-D2 from the Institute for Basic Science.

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Correspondence to Hee-Sup Shin.

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Shin, HS. Altruism and social rewards. Nat Neurosci 25, 1405–1406 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01190-7

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