Social interaction networks in the primate brain

•Even simple pairwise interactions can generate complex group dynamics.•Primates have evolved cognitive mechanisms to understand social interactions.•Distributed primate brain circuitry supports social interaction analysis.•The organization of this and other circuits elucidates social brain organization.•Uncovering mechanisms and computations of social cognition requires new approaches. Primate brains have evolved to understand and engage with their social world. Much about the structure of this world can be gleaned from social interactions. Circuits for the analysis of and participation in social interactions have now been mapped. Increased knowledge about their functional specializations and relative spatial locations promises to greatly improve the understanding of the functional organization of the primate social brain. Detailed electrophysiology, as in the case of the face-processing network, of local operations and functional interactions between areas is necessary to uncover neural mechanisms and computation principles of social cognition. New naturalistic behavioral paradigms, behavioral tracking, and new analytical approaches for parallel non-stationary data will be important components toward a neuroscientific theory of primates’ interactive minds.