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Asymmetric prefrontal representations for leader–follower dynamics

Research Social Neuroscience

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TL;DR - A Nature study finds that cooperating mice spontaneously adopt leader and follower roles, with the medial prefrontal cortex representing these dynamics. The findings link prefrontal activity to social roles and partner-relative value during cooperation.

  • Cooperative behavior produced distinct leader–follower roles without explicit assignment.
  • The medial prefrontal cortex encoded changes in these social roles.
  • Neural representations included an egocentric social value map based on the partner’s position.
  • The results offer a neural framework for understanding coordinated social behavior.

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Asymmetric prefrontal representations for leader–follower dynamics

Nature Yuan Cheng, Yusi Chen, Myungji Kwak, Ross P. Kempner, Rudramani Singha, Jared Winslow, Runqi Liu, Umais Khan, Tessa Spangler, Alvi Khan, Talmo Pereira, Matthew Whiteway, Evan S. Schaffer, Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana, Nan Yang, Herbert Zheng Wu 2026-08-19 doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10900-1
Public signals OpenAlex citations 2
Providers: Hugging Face · N/A OpenAlex · Citations 2 Publisher · N/A Semantic Scholar · N/A X · N/A Fetched 2026-09-19 14:25:21.265412 UTC

TL;DR - A Nature study finds that cooperating mice spontaneously adopt leader and follower roles, with the medial prefrontal cortex representing these dynamics. The findings link prefrontal activity to social roles and partner-relative value during cooperation.

  • Cooperative behavior produced distinct leader–follower roles without explicit assignment.
  • The medial prefrontal cortex encoded changes in these social roles.
  • Neural representations included an egocentric social value map based on the partner’s position.
  • The results offer a neural framework for understanding coordinated social behavior.
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