The Neuroscience of Cooperation: Cracking the Brain’s Code for Teamwork
Have you ever wondered how our brains decide when to cooperate, or when to put our own interests first? In my lab, we study the brain circuits that make teamwork possible. To do this, we use treeshrews, small primate-like animals with surprisingly sophisticated decision-making abilities. We train pairs of treeshrews to play a cooperation game based on game theory, where sometimes they must “insist” on their own choice and other times “accommodate” their partner’s. While they play, we record brain activity in regions like the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, which are critical for social decision-making. By combining these behavioral tasks with cutting-edge tools like multi-electrode recordings and optogenetics, we aim to reveal how brain circuits compute fairness, trust, and cooperation. This project offers undergraduates the chance to work hands-on with behavioral training, neural recordings, and data analysis, all while tackling one of the biggest mysteries of social neuroscience.