By Sanela Sakic

6/21/2020

Biology

Eportfolio

Can we do brain surgery to change how we think socially?

This scientific research is about how scientists experimented on the monkey’s brain to

see if they would change the way they socialize. Since monkeys are closely related to humans I

also believe that this experiment would work on humans. Neuroscientists did an act of testing to

see if the monkeys would act differently before and after the surgery. I pick this experiment

because I find it fascinating that we can change our entire social preferences. Changing your

social attitude or preferences can be like you’re entirely a new person. For example, in the

scientific journal it says “Neuroscientists are just beginning to understand how the brain assigns

value to social outcomes and translates that value to stable social preferences” (Basile, Benjamin

M., et al. “The Anterior Cingulate Cortex Is Necessary for Forming Prosocial Preferences from

Vicarious Reinforcement in Monkeys.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, 12 June

2020).

Although they do know the main part of our brain that is instituted with socializing is the

medial frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and etc. (Basile, Benjamin M., et al. “The

Anterior Cingulate Cortex Is Necessary for Forming Prosocial Preferences from Vicarious

Reinforcement in Monkeys.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, 12 June 2020). I don’t

like how they experimented on monkeys just to test their theories of whether they will change

socially. I do admit though that we would not be able to figure out about the world if we didn’t.
 After the surgery, they started to do some social testing. They wanted to see if the

monkeys would do anything socially different. They mainly focused on “A visual cue on the

screen rotated to signal juice outcome: reward to self (“Self”), reward to the other monkey

(“Other”), or reward to neither monkey (“Neither”)” (Basile, Benjamin M., et al. “The Anterior

Cingulate Cortex Is Necessary for Forming Prosocial Preferences from Vicarious Reinforcement

in Monkeys.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, 12 June 2020). To test these three

outcomes they used a treat, which was Juice to help make the monkeys make the decision. I

don’t think that was a good idea. Monkeys don’t normally drink juice so I find that a bit

ridiculous. They should have used a banana.

The results of the testing “all 6 actor monkeys showed a reliable prosocial preference for

other trials over neither trials and the magnitude of this preference did not differ between the

groups designated to serve as controls or receive surgery” (Basile, Benjamin M., et al. “The

Anterior Cingulate Cortex Is Necessary for Forming Prosocial Preferences from Vicarious

Reinforcement in Monkeys.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, 12 June 2020). So

nothing really has changed. All of the 6 monkeys that did the surgery still were sociably positive

and the ones who didn’t or the control group were also still sociably positive.

Interestingly enough though are the rare monkeys that were more negatively social.

Meaning there more of neither or other. I found it fascinating that “Monkeys without prosocial

preferences after ACC lesions still showed pupil size differences on other versus neither trials”

(Basile, Benjamin M., et al. “The Anterior Cingulate Cortex Is Necessary for Forming Prosocial

Preferences from Vicarious Reinforcement in Monkeys.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of

Science, 12 June 2020). While, they might have learned that the pupils are bigger on the negative

social monkeys they didn’t learn as much as they should of in this experiment. If they are going
to do this again. I suggest not. Brain surgery may influence your social preference when

changed, but there is also genetic factors that plays in part. As well as behavior. All these

influence the monkey’s behavior if they are really going to be positively social or negatively

social.
 Work cited

Basile, Benjamin M., et al. “The Anterior Cingulate Cortex Is Necessary for Forming Prosocial

Preferences from Vicarious Reinforcement in Monkeys.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of

Science, 12 June 2020, journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?

id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.3000677.https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?

id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000677