Macaques Exhibit Implicit Gaze Bias Anticipating Others’ False-Belief-Driven Actions via Medial Prefrontal Cortex

• DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.03.013
• Publication Date: 2020-03-31T14:35:00Z
• Authors: Taketsugu Hayashi; Ryota Akikawa; Keisuke Kawasaki; Jun Egawa; Takafumi Minamimoto; Kazuto Kobayashi; Shigeki Kato; Yukiko Hori; Yuji Nagai; Atsuhiko Iijima; Toshiyuki Someya; Isao Hasegawa
• Keywords: Male; Neurons; Analysis of Variance; 0303 health sciences; Behavior, Animal; Culture; Video Recording; Prefrontal Cortex; Fixation, Ocular; 03 medical and health sciences; Animals; Macaca; Female

The ability to infer others' mental states is essential social interactions. This ability, critically evaluated by testing whether one attributes false beliefs (FBs) others, has been considered be uniquely hominid and accompany the activation of a distributed brain network. We challenge taxon specificity this identify causal locus introducing an anticipatory-looking FB paradigm combined with chemogenetic neuronal manipulation in macaque monkeys. find spontaneous gaze bias macaques implicitly anticipating FB-driven actions. Silencing medial prefrontal activity inhibitory designer receptor exclusively activated drugs (DREADDs) specifically eliminates implicit while leaving animals' visually guided memory-guided tracking abilities intact. Thus, cortex could have role FB-attribution-like behaviors primate lineage, emphasizing importance probing mechanisms underlying theory mind relevant animal models.