ePoster

Involvement of amygdala neurons in male predominance of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Noa Montefiore, Reut Suliman Lavie, Sagiv Shifman, Yosef Yarom
FENS Forum 2024(2024)
Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Conference

FENS Forum 2024

Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Noa Montefiore, Reut Suliman Lavie, Sagiv Shifman, Yosef Yarom

Abstract

Male predominance is one of the least understood characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). While more than a hundred genes are involved in ASD, only a few of them show sex differences in behavior. In a previous work, we found that male mice harboring a mutation in the Pogz gene (Pogz+/-) show sexually dimorphic overly friendly behavior in several sociability assays. Mapping the engaged neurons during social recognition revealed that in Pogz+/- males, there are more activated neurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) than control and Pogz+/- female mice. To characterize the morphophysiological properties of these BLA neurons, we conducted in-vitro whole-cell recordings from both Pogz+/- and control mice. We employed targeted recombination in active populations (Trap2) in response to a social smell test to label the neurons. Preliminary results from single-cell recording from the BLA present three types of principal neurons, characterized by unique AHP and spike trains of action potentials with varying degrees of spike frequency adaptation in response to a long current injection. Initial results also indicate that the neurons active during the social smell test exhibit some characteristics similar to the principal neurons we identified in the BLA. Further results are needed, and experiments are currently underway to collect more data. Our overall aim is to identify the possible differences in population make-up or in the activity of BLA neurons, leading to the differences in social behavior between Pogz+/- and control mice.

Unique ID: fens-24/involvement-amygdala-neurons-male-predominance-ea8d8618