Medial Prefrontal Cortex Updates Its Status

Mina Cikara; Samuel J Gershman

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2016.11.040

Medial Prefrontal Cortex Updates Its Status

Neuron. 2016 Dec 7;92(5):937-939. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.11.040.

Authors

Mina Cikara¹, Samuel J Gershman²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
² Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: gershman@fas.harvard.edu.

PMID: 27930908
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.11.040

Abstract

How does the brain infer social status? A new study by Kumaran et al. (2016) identifies a region of the medial prefrontal cortex that, in concert with the amygdala and hippocampus, subserves updating of probabilistic beliefs about the status of individuals in a social hierarchy.

Keywords: Bayesian models; amygdala; hippocampus; social status.

MeSH terms

Amygdala*
Brain
Hippocampus
Humans
Prefrontal Cortex*