美国西奈山伊坎医学院Herbert Zheng Wu等合作，揭示了领导-追随者动态的不对称前额叶表征。2026年8月19日，《自然》发表了这项成果。

跨物种而言，合作行为通常由领导者与追随者等不同社会角色来组织，但支撑这些涌现角色动态的神经机制仍不清楚。在此，研究人员引入了一种小鼠范式，该范式能够捕捉合作过程中的领导者-追随者动态。在该范式中，稳定的社会角色通过交互作用涌现，并可预测学习速度。干扰内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）的活动，尤其是追随者中的mPFC活动，会损害合作，并导致动物在决策过程中权衡自身与伙伴相关线索的方式发生互补性转变。钙成像显示，mPFC表征了领导者-追随者动态，并以一种依赖于角色的方式计算出伙伴位置的自我中心社会价值地图。通过将这些实证发现与多智能体逆强化学习框架相结合，研究人员识别出指导合作决策的潜在价值函数，且这些函数可从mPFC活动中解码。

这些发现确定了前额叶皮层对领导者-追随者动态和伙伴信息的表征，揭示了社会角色如何构建对共同决策的不对称但又相互的影响。

附：英文原文

Title: Asymmetric prefrontal representations for leader–follower dynamics

Author: Cheng, Yuan, Chen, Yusi, Kwak, Myungji, Kempner, Ross P., Singha, Rudramani, Winslow, Jared, Liu, Runqi, Khan, Umais, Spangler, Tessa, Khan, Alvi, Pereira, Talmo, Whiteway, Matthew, Schaffer, Evan S., Rungratsameetaweemana, Nuttida, Yang, Nan, Wu, Herbert Zheng

Issue&Volume: 2026-08-19

Abstract: Across species, cooperative behaviour is often organized by distinct social roles such as leaders and followers, yet the neural mechanisms that support these emergent role dynamics remain unclear. Here we introduce a mouse paradigm that captures leader–follower dynamics during cooperation. In this paradigm, stable social roles emerge through reciprocal interaction and predict learning speed. Disrupting the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), particularly in followers, impairs cooperation and induces complementary shifts in how animals weigh self- and partner-related cues during decision-making. Calcium imaging reveals that the mPFC represents leader–follower dynamics and computes an egocentric social value map of the partner’s position in a role-dependent manner. By integrating these empirical findings with a multi-agent inverse reinforcement learning framework, we identify latent value functions that guide cooperative decisions and are decodable from mPFC activity. These findings identify prefrontal representations of leader–follower dynamics and partner information, revealing how social roles structure asymmetric yet reciprocal influence over joint decisions.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10900-1

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10900-1