Authors
Yavuz, E., Xu, C., Liu, W., Slinn, C., Mitchell, A., Ali, J., Bloom, N., Khatun, N., Kirk, P., Zisch, F., Tachtsidis, I., Pinti, P., Ronca, F., Patai, Z., Burgess, P., Hamilton, A., Spiers, H.
Abstract
Orca, wolves, chimpanzees and humans share a similarly impressive capacity for group hunting, where individuals coordinate behaviour together to capture prey. Studying hunting behaviours has important implications for understanding how behaviour in group contexts may be indicative of cognitive decline. Despite growing interest in brain circuits for prey capture, the brain regions involved in tracking prey during a hunt and the behaviours in group hunt linked to success remain unclear. Here we combined functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and a virtual minecraft world to examine behaviour, brain dynamics and brain synchrony involved in group hunting behaviour. We focused on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) due to its known role in planning and social coordination and recorded from pairs of individuals as they either cooperated to hunt another person (prey) or simply followed another person. Hunters were more successful if they managed to keep a smaller distance to the prey and moved at speeds that were more synchronised with their co-predator. At mid- and high-range frequencies, we found greater brain-to-brain synchrony in lateral and medial (frontopolar) PFC regions during hunting compared with chance levels. Together, these findings provide insights into what behaviours and brain dynamics associated with successful group hunting.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 08 Apr 2026.
Advertisement
Stats
- Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
- Views 34
- Comments 0