Title: Neural mechanisms of social structure learning and their behavioural consequences

Speaker: Marco Wittmann (Dept. of Experimental Psychology, UCL)

Location: In Person & Online via Zoom

Abstract: Navigating social environments is a fundamental challenge for the brain. While social information is often represented at an individual level, learning the structure in which individuals interact and relate to each other is equally important for adaptive social decision-making. I present evidence across behavioural, fMRI, and ongoing MEG and transcranial ultrasound studies suggesting that medial prefrontal cortex represents the combinatorial possibilities for social interaction in a compressed format resembling basis functions observed in other domains. These basis functions capture group-level structure and predict specific choice patterns, including counterintuitive effects where decision-irrelevant players influence behaviour, consistent with stepwise, hierarchical decision making. Initial MEG results suggest that such structure representations emerge rapidly after stimulus presentation, and preliminary evidence from non-invasive deep brain stimulation is consistent with a role of prefrontal cortex in embedding social information into its structural context. Together, these findings provide converging evidence that medial prefrontal cortex compresses social information into low-dimensional structure that supports efficient and flexible decision making.

Website link: https://www.wittmann-lab.com/

Bluesky: @mkwittmann.bsky.social