Prefrontal neurons govern who initiates and who follows in a huddling group

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 24 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02245-9

Mice make decisions, encoded by unique cortical populations, to self-organize into group huddles for warmth. Silencing these populations in some members decreases their huddling decisions and triggers compensatory increases in other animals, which reveals how individual neural activity shapes group behavior.