Social Decision-Making in Response to Competing Stimuli

ABSTRACT Animals routinely encounter diverse social stimuli that can be simultaneous and vary in salience, valence and relevance in regard to ongoing behavioral decisions. Understanding how animals weigh such competing information is crucial for revealing the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying context-dependent social behavior. Here, we investigated how male Astatotilapia burtoni navigate situations in which they must choose between rival males, potential mates, or both socially relevant cues. We first quantified focal male engagement toward stimulus types and found that males prioritized stimuli based on identity, context, and inferred threat level. We then examined the underlying neural correlates of these decisions in the preoptic area (POA) and area Dm (the putative teleost homolog of the basolateral amygdala (area Dm), two key nodes of the social decision-making network (SDMN). Using phosphorylated ribosomal protein S6 (pS6) as a marker of neural activity and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) to identify dopaminergic cell populations, we found that overall activity of these brain regions as well as the activity of dopaminergic cell populations did not differ between the different social stimulus treatments. Our results reveal how animals navigate complex environments involving multiple social cues and highlight the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting stimulus prioritization.