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Social behavior

Altruism and social rewards

Nature Neuroscience volume 25, pages 1405–1406 (2022)Cite this article

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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.

In biology, altruism refers to behavior that increases the fitness of another individual while reducing one’s own fitness. Hypotheses to explain this seemingly puzzling behaviour have been advanced, with one being the enhancement of inclusive fitness, similar to kin selection. In some situations, altruism is a behavior that benefits another individual at a cost to oneself. This behavior may be explained by anticipation of future benefit via reciprocal altruism, as in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game. Altruistic behavior that benefits another individual without anticipation of reciprocity is more difficult to explain. In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Scheggia et al.1 investigated this issue, by establishing a new behavioral paradigm in mice and exploring neural pathways involved in this interesting behavior.

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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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  1. Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Hee-Sup Shin

  2. SL Bigen Co. (Ltd.), Incheon, Republic of Korea

    Hee-Sup Shin

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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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