An interdisciplinary team of scientists has discovered that, to effectively learn from others, it is necessary to engage the prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, neural plasticity in this brain area is critically important for the process. Scientific data on this was presented using computational and analytical contributions developed and carried out by prof. Krzysztof Turzyński from the UW Faculty of Physics. The discovery, published in the “Science Advances” scientific journal, sheds a new light on the brain mechanisms of social learning.

Scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Oxford have revealed the brain underpinnings of information sharing within social networks, an ability that is critical for fostering behavioral flexibility in social mammals, including humans. The findings, published in the “Science Advances”, underscore the critical role of neural plasticity in the prefrontal cortex in maintaining social structures and adaptive behaviours.

The research involved an interdisciplinary effort, combining automated tests of laboratory mice behavior and new methods of data analysis developed and carried out by prof. Krzysztof Turzyński from the UW Faculty of Physics.

Computational and analytical contributions

The use of advanced computational methods and new data analysis techniques made it possible to present the complex social behaviors of mice.

“The challenges in the data analysis consisted in the fact that a group of a dozen or so mice exhibit complex social behaviors. The animals can follow each other, stay close to each other or, on the contrary, avoid each other. Many of these relationships can be presented as directed and undirected graphs, whose vertices correspond to individuals, and the edges, relations, connecting them can be assigned weights describing the strength of these relationships. In order to answer the questions of social relationships in the group, we used, for example, the PageRank algorithm, which is used to position websites,” explains prof. Krzysztof Turzyński.

The study not only sheds light on the neural mechanisms of social learning but also highlights its broader implications for understanding brain function. These insights may provide a foundation for understanding brain dysfunction in conditions where social adaptability is impaired, such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, or Alzheimer’s disease.