Speaker
Description
Primates have a complex social life that requires monitoring and understanding the actions and choices of the other group members and learning from others' behavior. While previous behavioral studies have shown monkeys' remarkable observational learning abilities, how the information learned by observation is encoded at the neural level has not been studied yet. In this study, we recorded single-unit activity in the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) while two macaque monkeys performed a human-monkey observational learning task, where the monkeys had to learn to identify the rewarded stimuli located in 4 unique complex scenes generated for each recording session. At the beginning of each session, the monkey was required to observe the human experimenter, showing them the correct stimulus-scene association (Learning period) for 60 consecutive trials. Then, the monkey was tested for the correct learning of associations (Test period) for 15 trials. Finally, the session ended with the experimenter and monkey taking turns performing the task (Interaction period). Both monkeys completed the Test period almost without errors, providing compelling evidence that they had learned the correct associations. We found that the neuronal population in PMd gradually predicted the future human action toward the correct stimulus as the learning period progressed, reaching its highest level during the interaction period. Then, by applying a decoding approach, we found that such representation mutated throughout the learning period, shifting from a dynamic to a static representation. These findings indicate the involvement of the PMd not only in individual but also in associative learning through observation.
| If you're submitting a poster, would you be interested in giving a blitz talk? | No |
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| If you're submitting a symposium talk, what's the symposium title? | Interacting with the world: from neurons to social behavior |
| If you're submitting a symposium, or a talk that is part of a symposium, is this a junior symposium? | No |
