Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Dec 5;26(23):3107-3115.
doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.09.015. Epub 2016 Oct 27.

Dynamical Representation of Dominance Relationships in the Human Rostromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Romain Ligneul  1 , Ignacio Obeso  2 , Christian C Ruff  3 , Jean-Claude Dreher  4
Affiliations
Free article

Dynamical Representation of Dominance Relationships in the Human Rostromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Romain Ligneul et al. Curr Biol. .
Free article

Abstract

Humans and other primates have evolved the ability to represent their status in the group's social hierarchy, which is essential for avoiding harm and accessing resources. Yet it remains unclear how the human brain learns dominance status and adjusts behavior accordingly during dynamic social interactions. Here we address this issue with a combination of fMRI and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In a first fMRI experiment, participants learned an implicit dominance hierarchy while playing a competitive game against three opponents of different skills. Neural activity in the rostromedial PFC (rmPFC) dynamically tracked and updated the dominance status of the opponents, whereas the ventromedial PFC and ventral striatum reacted specifically to competitive victories and defeats. In a second experiment, we applied anodal tDCS over the rmPFC to enhance neural excitability while subjects performed a similar competitive task. The stimulation enhanced the relative weight of victories over defeats in learning social dominance relationships and exacerbated the influence of one's own dominance over competitive strategies. Importantly, these tDCS effects were specific to trials in which subjects learned about dominance relationships, as they were not present for control choices associated with monetary incentives but no competitive feedback. Taken together, our findings elucidate the role of rmPFC computations in dominance learning and unravel a fundamental mechanism that governs the emergence and maintenance of social dominance relationships in humans.

Keywords: fMRI; locus of control; mPFC; performance; reinforcement-learning; social dominance; social hierarchy; social learning; tDCS; ventral striatum.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources