PHYSPROSOC · Physiological bases of prosocial behaviors

Social life is a mix of cooperation and competition. A critical component of cooperation is proactive prosociality, arguably contributing to the emergence of complex cognition. Recent findings in corvids reported similarities in the behavioral and cognitive levels between birds and mammals, suggesting convergent evolution of socio-cognitive skills. This project aims to understand the development of prosocial behaviors and their underlying physiological mechanisms in two avian species – Carrion Crows and Ring Doves. The main premise of this project is that the brain governs both behavior and autonomic body responses, thus, autonomic biomarkers can be used to gauge brain activity during complex behaviors such as social interactions. A newly established methodology will be deployed to continuously monitor autonomic biomarkers such as heart rate and body temperature in two or more interacting partners during forming alliances and cooperative, affiliative, and sexual behaviors. The biomarkers will be used for longitudinal measurements of proactive-reactive social behaviors during the socio-cognitive development of crows to predict prosocial behaviors and individual differences in social integration. Altogether, this research will contribute to the understanding of physiological mechanisms driving social behavior and bridge the gap between studies in animal cognition using a purely behavioral approach and invasive neuroscience methods to study brain circuits underlying behavior.