Reciprocal cortico-amygdala connections regulate prosocial and selfish choices in mice

Decisions that favor one’s own interest versus the interest of another individual depend on context and the relationships between individuals. The neurobiology underlying selfish choices or choices that benefit others is not understood. We developed a two-choice social decision-making task in which mice can decide whether or not to share a reward with their conspecifics. Preference for altruistic choices was modulated by familiarity, sex, social contact, hunger, hierarchical status, and emotional state matching. Fiber photometry recordings and chemogenetic manipulations demonstrated that BLA neurons are involved in the establishment of prosocial decisions. In particular, BLA neurons projecting to the prelimbic region (PL) of the PFC mediated the development of a preference for altruistic choices, whereas PL projections to the BLA modulated self-interest motives on decision-making. This provides a neurobiological model of altruistic and selfish choices with relevance to pathologies associated with dysfunctions in social decision-making.