Steve Chang 
Assistant Professor Yale University

Social behaviors of nonhuman primates greatly resemble those of humans. Nonhuman primates live in large, hierarchical groups and acquire complex social information visually to guide decisions influencing themselves and others. Not surprisingly, there are vast similarities in the neurobiology of social cognition between humans and nonhuman primates.I will describe selected neurobiological mechanisms underlying social interactions in rhesus macaques. I will first discuss other-regarding preferences and social gaze dynamics between pairs of macaques in order to establish the importance of macaques' understanding others in guiding their social behaviors. A series of neurobiological finding are beginning to inform us how neurons from distinct brain regions represent the self and others as well as interactive social events. The way the primate brain computes key variables concerning self and others during social interactions may help us understand how nonhuman and human primates represent other minds.Social behaviors of nonhuman primates greatly resemble those of humans. Nonhuman primates live in large, hierarchical groups and acquire complex social information visually to guide decisions influencing themselves and others. Not surprisingly, there are vast similarities in the neurobiology of social cognition between humans and nonhuman primates. I will describe selected neurobiological mechanisms underlying social interactions in rhesus macaques. I will first discuss other-regarding preferences and social gaze dynamics between pairs of macaques in order to establish the importance of macaques' understanding others in guiding their social behaviors. A series of neurobiological findingsare beginning to inform us how neurons from distinct brain regions represent the self and others as well as interactive social events. The way the primate brain computes key variables concerning self and others during social interactions may help us understand how nonhuman and human primates represent other minds.

Dal Monte, O., Piva, M., Anderson, K. M., Tringides, M., Holmes, A. J., & Chang, S. W. (2017). Oxytocin under opioid antagonism leads to supralinear enhancement of social attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(20), 5247-5252.

Dal Monte, O., Piva, M., Morris, J. A., & Chang, S. W. (2016). Live interaction distinctively shapes social gaze dynamics in rhesus macaques. Journal of Neurophysiology, 116(4), 1626-1643.

Chang, S. W., Gariépy, J. F., & Platt, M. L. (2013). Neuronal reference frames for social decisions in primate frontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 16(2), 243-250.