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Mary Notter Lectureship

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Elizabeth Doty Lectureship

Elisabeth A. Murray, PHD
Chief, Section on the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory
Laboratory of Neuropsychology
National Institute of Mental Health, NIH

Title: “Prefrontal-amygdala interactions in social cognition and decision making”
April 16th, 4:00pm
Zoom Link: TBA

ABSTRACT

The adaptive capabilities of animals and humans are remarkable. Some of our most astonishing abilities appear to stem from contributions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), yet there are few well defined and experimentally verified specializations within PFC. To address this shortcoming, our laboratory investigates the causal contributions of the ventral and medial prefrontal cortex to learning and decision making in macaques. For example, studies using permanent, selective lesions have contrasted the causal contributions of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the neighboring ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) to decision making. We found that OFC and VLPFC play complementary roles in tracking changes in value and—by extension—decision making. The former depends on dynamic internal states; the latter depends on dynamic external contingencies (Murray and Rudebeck, 2018). Other studies have examined the PFC contributions to social cognition. We found that medial frontal cortex (MFC) but not OFC is essential for aspects of social valuation, in part through interactions with the amygdala (Pujara et al., 2022). 

Conclusions: In macaques, MFC and OFC contribute to social cognition and value-based decision-making, respectively, in part through interactions with the amygdala. Thus, specialized prefrontal areas contribute to choices relating to conspecifics or choices independent of others.

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