phylogenetic & neural origins of human social cognition

v exciting to see an independent team successfully adapt our ape eye-tracking paradigms to provide the first evidence that monkeys can anticipate the behavior of an actor with a false belief!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124720303193

1/5

until recently, researchers believed that only humans can understand when someone has a view of the world that conflicts with our own. in the last few years, we have provided evidence that our closet ape relatives may be able to track others' conflicting perspectives as well

2/5

original ape study:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/110

more recent extension/conceptual replication:
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/42/20904

different method:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173793

3/5

this new monkey work suggests that the phenomena we've documented in apes extends to other primates. the authors additionally provide evidence that this form of primate social cognition relies on the medial prefrontal cortex, just like it does in humans.

4/5

the big takeaway: fundamental mechanisms that subserve human social cognition may have already been present 30 million years ago in the common ancestor that humans and apes share with japanese macaques!

5/5