Causal Role of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Learning Social Hierarchy

Abstract

Social hierarchy is a fundamental principle of social organization and an important attribute of community stability and development. Yet, little is known about the causal role of specific brain regions in learning hierarchies. Here, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we investigated the causal role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in learning social and non-social hierarchies. In the Training phase, participants(N=128) acquired knowledge of social and non-social hierarchy in parallel, by trial and error. During the Test phase, they were presented with two items from hierarchies that were never encountered together and required to make transitive inferences. Anodal stimulation over mPFC impaired social hierarchy learning compared with non-social learning and this modulation was influenced by the relative social rank of the members (i.e. higher or lower status). Anodal stimulation also impaired transitive inference making, but only during early blocks before learning was established. Together, our results provide causal evidence of mPFC engagement in learning social ranks by observation.