Neural and Behavioral Mechanisms of Social Learning

Social learning can be broadly defined as the ability to learn from others via observation, interaction, or instruction. This ability has been demonstrated in a variety of species and serves as a vital way for animals to acquire adaptively important information or behavior without having to directly put themselves at risk. In humans, our ability to record, compile, and modify information and behavioral processes across individuals and generations means that information passed along via competent instruction is not only low cost but high quality. As society becomes even more interconnected, the ability to effectively acquire information socially – and to identify unreliable social information - increasingly becomes an even more vital part of our ability to function at an individual and societal level.

Given the importance of social learning to human functioning, a thorough understanding of how social learning occurs at a mechanistic level is vital. While our understanding of how social learning occurs at the neural and behavioral levels has been steadily increasing over the past few years, we still lack a detailed understanding of the brain circuitry and behavioral mechanisms underlying this form of learning. Recent advances in neuroscience technology have provided us with new techniques that allow for detailed, direct, and real-time observation of both brain and behavioral activity in freely behaving animals (e.g., via calcium imaging and machine learning-based behavior scoring) and humans (e.g., via advances in hyperscanning techniques) which could greatly increase our understanding of how the brain encodes socially acquired information. Similarly, advances in transgenic, chemogenetic, and viral techniques now allow for highly specific manipulations of biology in nonhuman animals. This allows us to experimentally test the necessity of implicated proteins, structures, or circuits for social learning to occur.

In this collection, we hope to gather research that would contribute to our understanding of the brain and behavioral responses which do – or do not - (1) underlie social learning or (2) contribute to deficits in social learning. We are interested both in studies that have focused on defining the biological underpinnings of social learning, and studies that provide new information on the behavioral and environmental factors that contribute to an animal’s ability to learn socially. Experimental or observational studies focused on social learning mechanisms in human or non-human animals, papers presenting computational models of social learning, or any other work aimed at understanding the brain and behavioral mechanisms of social learning are all welcome submissions.