Tracking the neurons that make us social

Human beings, like most mammals, need social interactions to live and develop. The processes that drive them towards each other require decision making whose brain machinery is largely misunderstood. To decipher this phenomenon, a team has studied the neurobiological mechanisms at stake when two mice come into contact through learning a task. They observed that the motivation to invest in a social interaction is closely linked to the reward system, via the activation of dopaminergic neurons.