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Dopamine control of social novelty preference is constrained by an interpeduncular-tegmentum circuit
Why animals prefer novel social encounters over familiar ones is unclear. Here, authors find that mesolimbic dopamine encodes novel social interaction bout length; whereas familiar social encounters are shortened by an IPN→LDTg circuit that restricts dopamine to control novelty preference.
- Susanna Molas
- , Timothy G. Freels
- & Andrew R. Tapper
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Article
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Pheromone-based communication influences the production of somatic extracellular vesicles in C. elegans
Extracellular vesicles are fundamental in cellular communication. Here, authors show how C. elegans pheromones regulate vesicle production, showcasing the impact of social behaviors on cellular mechanisms.
- Agata Szczepańska
- , Katarzyna Olek
- & Michał Turek
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Social buffering in rats reduces fear by oxytocin triggering sustained changes in central amygdala neuronal activity
After rats were trained to fear a sound, they showed less fear when another rat was nearby and this calming effect lasted when the other rat was removed. Both reductions required oxytocin signaling from the hypothalamus to the central amygdala.
- Chloe Hegoburu
- , Yan Tang
- & Ron Stoop
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A prefrontal-thalamic circuit encodes social information for social recognition
How the brain distinguishes familiar individuals from unfamiliar ones is not fully understood. Here, the authors show that neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex and thalamus encode social information and the two brain areas interact with each other to promote social recognition.
- Zihao Chen
- , Yechao Han
- & Yang Zhan
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Article
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Stress-induced vagal activity influences anxiety-relevant prefrontal and amygdala neuronal oscillations in male mice
Interactions between the brain and the vagus nerve is crucial for expressing emotions. Here, authors show that vagus nerve activity is associated with prefrontal-amygdalar oscillations and restores stress-induced behavior.
- Toya Okonogi
- , Nahoko Kuga
- & Takuya Sasaki
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The psychological, computational, and neural foundations of indebtedness
Receiving a favour may induce a feeling of indebtedness in a beneficiary. Here, the authors develop and validate a model that captures the psychological, computational, and neural bases of how indebtedness arises and influences reciprocity behaviour.
- Xiaoxue Gao
- , Eshin Jolly
- & Luke J. Chang
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Article
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Midbrain node for context-specific vocalisation in fish
The midbrain is a major site for gating vocalization in vertebrates. Here, the authors show midbrain periaqueductal gray neurons in teleost fish with properties like those in mammals, sculpt the acoustic features of context-specific vocal signals.
- Eric R. Schuppe
- , Irene Ballagh
- & Andrew H. Bass
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Three-dimensional surface motion capture of multiple freely moving pigs using MAMMAL
3D social movement capture of large-size mammals is essential for agriculture and life science yet challenging. Here, the authors introduce MAMMAL, an algorithm to enable surface motion captures of multiple freely moving animals and quantitative behaviour measurement in a non-invasive manner.
- Liang An
- , Jilong Ren
- & Yebin Liu
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Self-reported childhood family adversity is linked to an attenuated gain of trust during adolescence
The authors examined how family experiences are linked to the development of trust in adolescence and young adulthood. They show that trust increases over time but self-reported family adversity can hinder this, and trust may act as a resilience factor in maintaining positive peer relations.
- Andrea M. F. Reiter
- , Andreas Hula
- & Raymond J. Dolan
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Frontal cortex activity during the production of diverse social communication calls in marmoset monkeys
In nonhuman primates, the role of frontal cortex in vocal production is unclear. Using wireless recording techniques in marmosets in a naturalistic social context, here the authors show that frontal cortex neural signals show distinct patterns for different call types.
- Lingyun Zhao
- & Xiaoqin Wang
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Evolution of schooling drives changes in neuroanatomy and motion characteristics across predation contexts in guppies
Corral-Lopez et al. use guppies as a model system for the evolution of collective motion. They show that guppies artificially selected for schooling remain highly coordinated across predation contexts and show key changes in brain morphology that likely increase the efficiency of sensory information relay.
- Alberto Corral-Lopez
- , Alexander Kotrschal
- & Niclas Kolm
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Social memory deficit caused by dysregulation of the cerebellar vermis
Social memory integrates past experiences into social interactions by distinguishing familiar from novel conspecifics. In this study, the authors delineated a role of the cerebellum in organizing the neural matrix required for social memory.
- Owen Y. Chao
- , Salil Saurav Pathak
- & Yi-Mei Yang
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Increasing associative plasticity in temporo-occipital back-projections improves visual perception of emotions
Temporo-occipital areas are involved in perceiving emotional faces. Here, the authors show that strengthening back-projections from temporal to occipital areas enhances visual cortex’s response to face stimuli and perception of emotions from them.
- Sara Borgomaneri
- , Marco Zanon
- & Alessio Avenanti
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Cellular profiling of a recently-evolved social behavior in cichlid fishes
This study links the genomic basis of behavioral variation to specific cell populations in the brain. Here, authors find evidence for involvement of neural stem cells in the evolution and expression of bower-building behavior in cichlid fishes.
- Zachary V. Johnson
- , Brianna E. Hegarty
- & Jeffrey T. Streelman
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Neural signatures of social inferences predict the number of real-life social contacts and autism severity
How our ability to infer the cognitive and emotional states of other people manifests in both neural activity and real-world social behavior is not fully understood. Here, the authors show neural activation patterns in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus during a social inference task predict the number of social contacts in both neurotypical and autism groups.
- Anita Tusche
- , Robert P. Spunt
- & Ralph Adolphs
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Chemogenetic dissection of a prefrontal-hypothalamic circuit for socially subjective reward valuation in macaques
How subjective reward value is affected by social comparison remains poorly understood. Here, the authors show a crucial role for the circuit from the medial prefrontal cortex to the lateral hypothalamus in subjective value modulation in social contexts.
- Atsushi Noritake
- , Taihei Ninomiya
- & Masaki Isoda
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Automatically annotated motion tracking identifies a distinct social behavioral profile following chronic social defeat stress
Accurate phenotyping is key to deciphering behavior. Here, authors show the utility of the software package DeepOF in supervised and unsupervised identification of distinct individual and social behavioral patterns following chronic social stress.
- Joeri Bordes
- , Lucas Miranda
- & Mathias V. Schmidt
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Adolescent stress impairs postpartum social behavior via anterior insula-prelimbic pathway in mice
The mechanisms of how adolescent stress causes abnormal postpartum social behavior are unclear. Here, authors show an underlying mechanism mediating by the anterior insula-prelimbic cortex pathway and glucocorticoid receptor signaling in mice.
- Kyohei Kin
- , Jose Francis-Oliveira
- & Minae Niwa
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Glutamatergic cerebellar neurons differentially contribute to the acquisition of motor and social behaviors
Cerebellar injury in early life can impair the development of motor and social behaviors. Here, the authors show that cerebellar cell types are differentially important for the acquisition of these behaviors in pups and adult mice.
- Meike E. van der Heijden
- , Alejandro G. Rey Hipolito
- & Roy V. Sillitoe
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Dynamic and stable hippocampal representations of social identity and reward expectation support associative social memory in male mice
The ability to recognize an individual and retrieve related information is crucial for social animals. Here, the authors employ a new social recognition paradigm to show that dorsal CA1 neurons distinguish individual mice and encode associated reward information.
- Eunji Kong
- , Kyu-Hee Lee
- & Doyun Lee
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Regulation of social interaction in mice by a frontostriatal circuit modulated by established hierarchical relationships
Here, the authors identify a frontostriatal circuit that is involved in regulating social interactions based on learned hierarchical relationships.
- Robert N. Fetcho
- , Baila S. Hall
- & Conor Liston
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Visual resemblance and interaction history jointly constrain pictorial meaning
Drawings can vary in abstraction while still being meaningful. Here, the authors leverage a two-player drawing game to evaluate a cognitive account of pictorial meaning in which both visual and social information jointly support visual communication.
- Robert D. Hawkins
- , Megumi Sano
- & Judith E. Fan
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Activation of the CA2-ventral CA1 pathway reverses social discrimination dysfunction in Shank3B knockout mice
The SHANK3 gene is linked to autism spectrum disorder and Phelan McDermid syndrome, which have been associated with social memory deficits. Here, authors show activation of the hippocampal CA2-ventral CA1 circuit in adult Shank3B knockout mice restores social memory.
- Elise C. Cope
- , Samantha H. Wang
- & Elizabeth Gould
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Correlated evolution of social organization and lifespan in mammals
To elucidate the relationship between sociality and longevity, the authors perform phylogenetic and transcriptomic comparative analysis of mammals. They find that group-living species lived longer than solitary species and identify 31 genes, hormones, and immunity-related pathways involved in this connection.
- Pingfen Zhu
- , Weiqiang Liu
- & Xuming Zhou
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Article
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Neural probe system for behavioral neuropharmacology by bi-directional wireless drug delivery and electrophysiology in socially interacting mice
Technologies for monitoring electrophysiological effects of drugs in behaving animals have limitations. Here the authors report a wireless neural probe system with drug delivery capability for real-time monitoring of drug effects.
- Yousang Yoon
- , Hyogeun Shin
- & Il-Joo Cho
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Neural circuit for social authentication in song learning
Human and bird infants acquire vocal patterns from live, not mimetic, tutors. Here, the authors identified the neuronal circuits to authenticate social information in zebra finch song learning, suggesting a brain developmental mechanism via social interactions.
- Jelena Katic
- , Yuichi Morohashi
- & Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama
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Social isolation modulates appetite and avoidance behavior via a common oxytocinergic circuit in larval zebrafish
Social interactions are known to guide behaviour, but how different species represent social stimuli is poorly understood. In this study, the authors demonstrate how social cues in the larval zebrafish suppress an oxytocinergic circuit, which regulates avoidance and feeding behaviour.
- Caroline L. Wee
- , Erin Song
- & Samuel Kunes
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Article
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In-degree centrality in a social network is linked to coordinated neural activity
Convergent processing of external stimuli may contribute to social connectedness. Here the authors show that people with high in-degree centrality in a social network have similar neural responses to their peers and to each other and that less-central individuals have idiosyncratic responses.
- Elisa C. Baek
- , Ryan Hyon
- & Carolyn Parkinson
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Superior Colliculus to VTA pathway controls orienting response and influences social interaction in mice
Solié, Contestabile et al. show that the superior colliculus to ventral tegmental area (VTA) pathway encodes orienting behavior toward conspecifics, and modulates VTA dopamine neurons projecting onto dorsolateral striatum perturbing social interaction.
- Clément Solié
- , Alessandro Contestabile
- & Camilla Bellone
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Amylin-Calcitonin receptor signaling in the medial preoptic area mediates affiliative social behaviors in female mice
The mechanisms coordinating the sensing and seeking of social contacts are unclear. Here, the authors show that amylin-calcitonin receptor signalling in the media preoptic area mediates affiliative social behaviors in female mice.
- Kansai Fukumitsu
- , Misato Kaneko
- & Kumi O. Kuroda
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Hemoglobin in the blood acts as a chemosensory signal via the mouse vomeronasal system
The vomeronasal system regulates sensing of various environmental cues. Here, the authors show that exposure to hemoglobin results in the activation of Vmn2r88+ vomeronasal sensory neurons in both male and female mice. However, exposure to hemoglobin enhances digging and rearing behaviour in lactating female mice only.
- Takuya Osakada
- , Takayuki Abe
- & Kazushige Touhara
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Automatic mapping of multiplexed social receptive fields by deep learning and GPU-accelerated 3D videography
High resolution descriptions of social interactions and their neural correlates are lacking. Here the authors report a pipeline enabling fully automatic multi-animal tracking during social encounters, together with simultaneous electrophysiological recordings, and show this works in low-light settings.
- Christian L. Ebbesen
- & Robert C. Froemke
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Precise visuomotor transformations underlying collective behavior in larval zebrafish
How visual social information informs movement is unclear. Here, the authors characterise the algorithm zebrafish use to transform visual inputs from neighbours into movement decisions during collective swimming behavior. The authors can also predict the neural circuits involved in transforming the visual input into movement decisions.
- Roy Harpaz
- , Minh Nguyet Nguyen
- & Florian Engert
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Neural encoding of perceived patch value during competitive and hazardous virtual foraging
Humans adapt decision strategies in response to environmental demands. Here the authors show that decisions in a virtual foraging task can be modelled based on perceived patch value, which includes reward, competition and threat, and is associated with activity in ventromedial prefrontal and medial cingulate cortices.
- Brian Silston
- , Toby Wise
- & Dean Mobbs
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Article
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Excitatory synapses and gap junctions cooperate to improve Pv neuronal burst firing and cortical social cognition in Shank2-mutant mice
How NMDAR and GABA neuronal dysfunctions result in impaired social behaviour is unclear. Here, the authors show that NMDARs and gap junctions in cortical PV interneurons modulate burst firing, affecting social behaviour.
- Eunee Lee
- , Seungjoon Lee
- & Eunjoon Kim
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Preference uncertainty accounts for developmental effects on susceptibility to peer influence in adolescence
People often change their preferences to conform with others. Using a longitudinal design, the authors show that such conformity decreases over the course of adolescence and that this reduction in conformity is accompanied by a decreasing degree of uncertainty about what to like.
- Andrea M. F. Reiter
- , Michael Moutoussis
- & Raymond J. Dolan
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FoxG1 regulates the formation of cortical GABAergic circuit during an early postnatal critical period resulting in autism spectrum disorder-like phenotypes
Cortical excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance is a feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, the authors show that FoxG1 regulates the formation of cortical GABAergic circuits affecting social behaviour during a specific postnatal time window in mouse models of ASD.
- Goichi Miyoshi
- , Yoshifumi Ueta
- & Mariko Miyata
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Oxytocin and vasopressin within the ventral and dorsal lateral septum modulate aggression in female rats
Aggression in females is understudied in model organisms. Here, the authors establish a model of enhanced aggression in virgin female rats and show that oxytocin and vasopressin systems differentially modulate aggression in distinct neuronal populations of the lateral septum of female rats.
- Vinícius Elias de Moura Oliveira
- , Michael Lukas
- & Inga D. Neumann
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Gut microbiome modulates Drosophila aggression through octopamine signaling
The gut microbiome regulates behaviour in a number of species. Here the authors show that depletion of the gut microbiome in Drosophila reduced aggressive behaviour, in an octopamine-dependent manner.
- Yicong Jia
- , Shan Jin
- & Wei Liu
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Article
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Canonical versus non-canonical transsynaptic signaling of neuroligin 3 tunes development of sociality in mice
Mutations of Neuroligin 3 (NLGN3) have been associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, the authors identify a previously undescribed interaction between NLGN3 and a splice variant of protein tyrosine phosphatase δ (PTP δ) and its role in development of social behaviour in mice.
- Tomoyuki Yoshida
- , Atsushi Yamagata
- & Shuya Fukai
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Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
The causes and consequences of social intelligence are challenging to establish. A study on wild cleaner fish reports that large forebrains enable individuals to score higher in a social competence test, suggesting forebrain size is important for complex social decision-making.
- Zegni Triki
- , Yasmin Emery
- & Redouan Bshary
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Article
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Distinct dynamics of social motivation drive differential social behavior in laboratory rat and mouse strains
Laboratory rat and mouse strains serve as animal models to explore brain mechanisms underlying social behavior. Here, the authors describe differences in social behavior between commonly used rat and mouse strains, which may reflect distinct dynamics of social motivation.
- Shai Netser
- , Ana Meyer
- & Shlomo Wagner
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Article
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Social attraction in Drosophila is regulated by the mushroom body and serotonergic system
Robust social attraction in fruit flies relies on two prominent senses, vision and olfaction, which converge to central brain neurons. The neurons of the γ lobe of the mushroom bodies integrate sensory information and modulate social affinity.
- Yuanjie Sun
- , Rong Qiu
- & Yan Zhu
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Perspective
| Open Access
Interactions with conspecific outsiders as drivers of cognitive evolution
The social intelligence hypothesis predicts that social organisms tend to be more intelligent because within-group interactions drive cognitive evolution. Here, authors propose that conspecific outsiders can be just as important in selecting for sophisticated cognitive adaptations.
- Benjamin J. Ashton
- , Patrick Kennedy
- & Andrew N. Radford
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Article
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Face selective patches in marmoset frontal cortex
In Old World primates, socially relevant face processing is accomplished via a distributed functional network including specialized patches in the frontal cortex. Here, the authors demonstrate a similar network in frontal cortex of New World marmoset monkeys, suggesting inheritance from a common ancestor.
- David J. Schaeffer
- , Janahan Selvanayagam
- & Stefan Everling
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Behavioral and neuronal underpinnings of safety in numbers in fruit flies
Living in groups allows animals to decrease defenses, enabling other behaviors, but the mechanisms of safety in numbers are unknown. The authors show that fruit flies regulate freezing behavior as a function of group size and identify motion by others, and neurons that detect it, as key to this process.
- Clara H. Ferreira
- & Marta A. Moita
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Article
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The lateral septum mediates kinship behavior in the rat
Kinship behavior in rodents has been documented in the laboratory setting but the neural mechanisms that mediate kinship behavior are not known. Here, the authors show that the lateral septum has a key role in organizing mammalian kinship behavior.
- Ann M. Clemens
- , Hong Wang
- & Michael Brecht
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Article
| Open Access
P2X7 receptor inhibition ameliorates dendritic spine pathology and social behavioral deficits in Rett syndrome mice
P2X7 receptors are purinergic receptors with pro-inflammatory functions. Here, the authors show that inhibition of leukocyte P2X7 receptors reduces dendritic spine pathology and social behavioral deficits in a mouse model of Rett syndrome.
- Juan Mauricio Garré
- , Hernandez Moura Silva
- & Guang Yang
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Article
| Open Access
Prefrontal parvalbumin interneurons require juvenile social experience to establish adult social behavior
Isolation during critical periods of development prevents development of normal social behaviours in mice, and this is thought to involve the prefrontal cortex. Here, the authors identify an activation pattern in parvalbumin-positive interneurons in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex that when activated promotes sociability behaviours in mice.
- Lucy K. Bicks
- , Kazuhiko Yamamuro
- & Hirofumi Morishita
Neurocomputational mechanisms involved in adaptation to fluctuating intentions of others