General Framework
Our lab studies the neurobiology and behavior of monkey agents as way of understanding the evolution and function of the human brain and social behavior. What do we mean by “monkey agents”? We use the term in a very generic sense: agents are things that can be viewed as perceiving their environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through effectors. For primates, the most salient features of the environment are other status-striving agents. The lab focuses on the communication signals that mediate interactions between conspecifics. A biological agent’s behavior is the result of the interplay between its evolutionary history, individual development and experience, and the current context. These represent different timescales. First, there is a short time scale which relates to mechanisms (perceptual or neural) operating in real time guiding the agent’s behavior. Second, an intermediate time scale which incorporates the development and/or experience of the agent over its lifetime. Finally, a very long time scale which focuses on the phylogeny, or evolution, of an agent’s behavior. These time scales are interactive in the sense that processes that occur at one level can affect the other two. These time scale distinctions offer different ways that an agent’s behavior can be explained. The major focus of the work in our lab is on the functional mechanisms of social interactions that occur in real time. Collaborations with investigators outside Princeton University allow to us to pursue ideas that address the developmental and evolutionary time scales through comparative studies with humans and other primates, including macaques and vervet monkeys.