Brain cells predict opponents move in game-playing monkeys

Neurons sensitive to others’ intentions could offer clues to disorders that impair social judgments

GAME ON  Researchers have discovered brain cells in video game-playing macaques that predict another monkey’s next move. Such brain cells may be important in social interactions that require anticipating what others are thinking.

Newly discovered brain cells in monkeys can predict another monkey’s actions in a cooperation game. If such brain cells also exist in humans, they may be important in social interactions that require calculating another person’s intentions.
The brain cells were found in rhesus macaques playing a video game called the prisoner’s dilemma. The cells keep track of how other monkeys behaved in previous rounds of the game and predict the other monkeys’ next move, researchers report online February 26 in Cell.