Monkey see others, monkey do: How the brain allows actions based on social cues

(National Institutes of Natural Sciences) Researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan have shown that when monkeys make decisions based on social cues provided by other monkeys, information flow from one part of the brain (the ventral premotor cortex) to another (medial prefrontal cortex) is vital. When this neuronal pathway is silenced temporarily, monkeys cannot catch the social cues and end up behaving like autistic monkeys.