The neuroethology of friendship

Brent, Lauren J. N.; Chang, Steve; Gariépy, Jean-François; Platt, Michael L.

doi:10.1111/nyas.12315

Cited by 118 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 202 publications

(387 reference statements)

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“…Though social dominance hierarchies are known to affect the health of their members, most notably in non-human primates [1], recent evidence has also demonstrated affiliative, non-hierarchical and non-kin relationships in primates, birds, ungulates and cetaceans [42]. Such relationships lend themselves to sociocentric network analyses of the type we deploy here [43].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Social connectedness is associated with fibrinogen level in a human social network

et al. 2016

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Socially isolated individuals face elevated rates of illness and death. Conventional measures of social connectedness reflect an individual's perceived network and can be subject to bias and variation in reporting. In this study of a large human social network, we find that greater indegree, a sociocentric measure of friendship and familial ties identified by a subject's social connections rather than by the subject, predicts significantly lower concentrations of fibrinogen (a biomarker of inflammation and cardiac risk), after adjusting for demographics, education, medical history and known predictors of cardiac risk. The association between fibrinogen and social isolation, as measured by low indegree, is comparable to the effect of smoking, and greater than that of low education, a conventional measure of socioeconomic disadvantage. By contrast, outdegree, which reflects an individual's perceived connectedness, displays a significantly weaker association with fibrinogen concentrations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Social connectedness is associated with fibrinogen level in a human social network

et al. 2016

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“…Research in non-human primates as well as in humans (Bartz et al, 2011; De Dreu, 2012; Guastella et al, 2012; Heinrichs and Domes, 2008; Insel, 2010; MacDonald and Feifel, 2013; Meyer-Lindenberg et al, 2011) suggests that OT might be an important component of the neuroendocrinological regulation of social relationships. In non-human animals, social relationships can be studied by examining naturally-occurring social bonds (Brent et al, in press, 2013). A recent study in wild chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) measured urinary OT levels after grooming bouts with different partners (Crockford et al, 2013).…”

Section: Ot Relaxes Social Vigilance Thereby Permitting Social Explomentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxytocin and social cognition in rhesus macaques: Implications for understanding and treating human psychopathology

Chang

Platt

2014

Brain Research

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Converging evidence from humans and non-human animals indicates that the neurohypophysial hormone oxytocin (OT) evolved to serve a specialized function in social behavior in mammals. Although OT-based therapies are currently being evaluated as remedies for social deficits in neuropsychiatric disorders, precisely how OT regulates complex social processes remains largely unknown. Here we describe how a non-human primate model can be used to understand the mechanisms by which OT regulates social cognition and thereby inform its clinical application in humans. We focus primarily on recent advances in our understanding of OT-mediated social cognition in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), supplemented by discussion of recent work in humans, other primates, and rodents. Together, these studies endorse the hypothesis that OT promotes social exploration both by amplifying social motivation and by attenuating social vigilance.

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“…Moreover, there is new evidence that serotonin and OT interact in brain circuits implicated in emotion regulation and social behaviour in humans [135], thus linking two neuromodulatory systems previously implicated in arousal and social function. Thus, although the definitive studies on the repeatability, fitness consequences and heritability of personality styles and social skills in the wild remain to be conducted, current evidence suggests that individual variation in social behaviour arises, in part, from the adaptive influence of genes on neural circuits and neuromodulatory systems mediating social function [136].…”

Section: Biological and Behavioural Variation In The Quality Of Sociamentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. Studies of the factors affecting reproductive success in group-living monkeys have traditionally focused on competitive traits, like the acquisition of high dominance rank. Recent research, however, indicates that the ability to form cooperative social bonds has an equally strong effect on fitness. Two implications follow. First, strong social bonds make individuals' fitness interdependent and the 'free-rider' problem disappears. Second, individuals must make adaptive choices that balance competition and cooperation-often with the same partners. The proximate mechanisms underlying these behaviours are only just beginning to be understood. Recent results from cognitive and systems neuroscience provide us some evidence that many social and nonsocial decisions are mediated ultimately by abstract, domain-general neural mechanisms. However, other populations of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, amygdala and parietal cortex specifically encode the type, importance and value of social information. Whether these specialized populations of neurons arise by selection or through developmental plasticity in response to the challenges of social life remains unknown. Many brain areas are homologous and show similar patterns of activity in human and nonhuman primates. In both groups, cortical activity is modulated by hormones like oxytocin and by the action of certain genes that may affect individual differences in behaviour. Taken together, results suggest that differences in cooperation between the two groups are a matter of degree rather than constituting a fundamental, qualitative distinction.

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The neuroethology of friendship

Cited by 118 publications

References 202 publications

Social connectedness is associated with fibrinogen level in a human social network

Social connectedness is associated with fibrinogen level in a human social network

Oxytocin and social cognition in rhesus macaques: Implications for understanding and treating human psychopathology

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

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