A03Computational Modeling of Dynamical Social Interaction in Non-Human Primate

 As the proverb says “the eyes are the window to the soul”, the nonverbal communication – using eye movements, face expressions, body postures, body motions and so on – is essential factor to represent internal states like emotions and intentions.
It is an open question how we encode/decode the meaning of social behavioral messages, in other words, how we quantify the dynamics of the natural interaction in the real world.

 Non-human primates have strong similarities to humans in terms of brain structure and social communication abilities. Especially, common marmosets have become a popular primate model for studying biological foundations of human social cognition and communication. In this research using marmosets, we will implement high resolutional 3D motion tracking system, and propose a new computational modeling method with unsupervised machine learning to describe the dynamics of social interaction.

 To verify our statistical description, we try to evaluate the alternation of the social behavioral phenotype induced by transient and local specific brain manipulation. The chemogenetic technology called DREADDs (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs) will allow us to manipulate of neural activity in uninstrumented awake animals.